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Movie Review: What We Do in the Shadows

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I’ve gotta say, while it’s only February, 2015 is shaping up to be a good year for horror-themed mockumentaries. Adam Green’s Digging Up the Marrow (review) was a fun romp, and What We Do in the Shadows is the funniest horror comedy I’ve seen in quite some time.

To be clear, it’s primarily a comedy, providing plenty of laughter throughout its duration. It follows a group of vampire roommates as they deal with each other and trying to fit into the New Zealand night life.

The film was written and directed by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (both of Flight of the Conchords and Eagle vs Shark fame). Both also star along with Jonathan Brugh, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Stuart Rutherford, Ben Fransham, and Jackie van Beek. The chemistry among all the actors couldn’t be better.

We get to know the four main vamps played by Clement, Waititi, Brugh, and Fransham through their stories about one another and a wonderful early montage showing off pictures of them throughout history. They’re different ages, ranging from hundreds to thousands of years old. The oldest, Petyr (Fransham) resembles Salem’s Lot’s Kurt Barlow, while the rest are more human-looking.

These guys do pretty much everything together. They live together, they have an amazing little band, they go out and hassle the werewolves (including Flight of the Conchords‘ Rhys Darby) together, and of course they eat together. This results in a fifth vampire that doesn’t always fit in with them as well as his human best friend does.

Also along for the ride is Jackie (van Beek), who plays the familiar to Deacon (Brugh), and runs all of his errands. She is waiting to be turned into a vampire.

The majority of the movie is spent leading up to the “Unholy Masquerade,” which is essentially a monster party, where vampires party with zombies.

Hilarity ensues throughout the movie, and the many laughs are what make What We Do in the Shadows as great as it is. It’s a comedy for sure, but it’s a comedy for horror fans more than anything. There are plenty of references to other genre films, and some great types of sequences that we really don’t get much in true horror films (such as vampires fighting one another in bat form).

To me, this is an instant classic. See it when you get the chance.

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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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