Connect with us

News

iHorror Exclusive: Director Greg McLean Clues Us In on “The Belko Experiment”

Published

on

The Belko Experiment bashes its way onto Blu Ray and DVD on June 27, 2017, and it is hands down a thing of violent beauty.

The film, written by James Gunn, centers around a group of Americans working in an office building in Colombia.  They arrive for work one day and soon after they get down to business, they find themselves locked inside with no escape as a voice over the building’s PA system instructs them to kill or be killed.  Naturally, at first they think it’s a sick joke, but they soon find themselves in a fight for survival that would make William Golding proud.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with director Greg McLean about this corporate Lord of the Flies, and he was excited to talk about how the film came to be and what he has in store for its audience.

“James wrote the script several years ago, but it ended up being shelved,”  McLean explained.  “He went on to become a superstar with Guardians of the Galaxy of course, and a few years later, someone asked if he’d be interested in coming back to Belko.”

Gunn jumped at the opportunity to make the film but he had two conditions: 1) He got to pick the director and 2) there could be no restrictions on how hardcore violent the film could be.  They had no arguments and before long McLean found himself with the script and pitching his ideas to Gunn on how he’d like to make the film.

“I felt like we had to use a counterpoint in the film,” he says.  ‘The kind of thing we saw Kubrick use a lot.  Have extremes between the form and content really creates an interesting effect.  By pairing this crazy violence with really beautiful music and lighting it almost makes that violence a little more palatable.  I wanted to see if we could make a very violent action movie that could be emotionally charged and fun, as well.”

It was a very thin line, the director admits, but one he ultimately walks well.  The film is filled with violence that is over the top (they are killing each other with supplies you can find in an office building after all), but at the same time I found myself genuinely involved in what these characters were going through and that involvement makes each death more intense.

Tony Goldwyn, John C. McGinley, and Owain Yeoman. Photo from Collider.com

Each shot is beautifully rendered and acted by a superb cast including John Gallagher, Jr. Tony Goldwyn, Melonie Diaz and Adria Arjona alongside James Gunn film regulars like Michael Rooker and Sean Gunn.  The score also stands out here with pop songs like “I Will Survive” and “California Dreamin'” translated into Spanish alongside the music of Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.

The director also manipulates color masterfully in the film.

“I think the key was trying to take the film from sort of normality to surrealism,” he confessed.  “By the time you get to the third act, what happened has been so crazy that now you have these very vivid pinks and reds and blues.  It reflects the insanity so well.”

When all of the elements come together, The Belko Experiment shines.  This a movie that is not only extremely violent, but also extremely funny.  You will laugh, gasp, cover your eyes, and hold your breath at regular intervals.

Check out the trailer below and pick up a copy of The Belko Experiment on DVD and Blu Ray on June 27, 2017!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZNfwayNLL0

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

on

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

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

Movies

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

Published

on

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.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading

News

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

Published

on

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.

'Civil War' Review: Is It Worth Watching?

Continue Reading