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My Introduction to Real Horror: George Romero

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We received the sad news today of the passing of George Romero, one of the icons of the Horror genre. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll see dozens, maybe hundreds, of articles analyzing his movies, looking at the life of the man himself, and looking at his impact on film and the Horror genre.

What many people forget though, is that Horror is a very subjective, and personal experience, and that’s the view I want to take on Romero’s passing. I want to share the way the man and his work impacted me.

To start, I’ve always been a Horror fan. I saw Gremlins in the theater at just four years old and immediately rooted for the monsters. I saw Child’s Play, I saw Critters, I watched all the classics. They were really just fun movies for me though, none of them inspired any sense of fear or even nervousness.

I was also a latch-key kid. My mom left for work long before the crack of dawn, and made sure I was up hours before I had to catch the bus for school, and that was when I first experienced George Romero.

It was late October, I was 13 and I was flipping through the channels at 5 AM. One station I always trusted was the Sci-Fi channel. They played classic Horror movies at 5 AM every day back then, so I settled in.

It turned out to be George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead. I was glued to it. Even in black and white, the blood and shadows played with my head. Everything the characters did made sense, they were all the things I could think of for what made sense to respond to their situation. So when everything they did failed, I failed. Then morning came. I felt relief and elation for Ben when he made it, only to have my heart drop when other survivors dropped him without hesitation.

For a seventh grader, that hit home like nothing else. It was something I knew, something everyone knows, that sometimes you work hard, and seem to succeed, only to have everything ripped away and be left with nothing. But to actually SEE it portrayed in such a way on television like that made it real in a way few things feel when you’re 13.

It probably didn’t help that right after that I had to walk by myself, half a mile to my bus stop with only one dingy, yellow street lamp for light and a nice thin layer of fog.

That was the first time a movie really freaked me out. I was going through the house on commercial breaks, checking locks, making sure the lights were on, and peering out the windows into the darkness of the neighborhood. It also made me extremely jumpy on the walk to the bus stop.

Night of the Living Dead showed me what Horror movies could really do when they were artfully crafted. They could be more than just fun little monster movies. They can affect you on a much deeper level, make you feel things you’re not used to and that you don’t want to feel. They give you that rush of adrenaline from the fight or flight response, even though you’re safe, cozy, and warm in a theater or your own home.

This movie was likely the turning point in my life with regards to Horror. It turned something that was just fun into something deeper and stronger. It’s the reason I write Horror now, watch Horror movies and TV shows all the time, read Horror novels and play Horror video games. It turned something that was merely an interest into a way of life. (And I can probably blame it for my twisted sense of humor, too.)

For all that, thank you George. We’ll miss you.

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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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