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Review: ‘Rave Party Massacre’ Misses the Mark

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Rave Party Massacre AKA DeadThirsty, the latest release from writer/director Jason Winn and co-writers Jonathan W. Hickman and Maggie D. Hickman takes us back to an illegal rave in a soon to be demolished hospital in the 1990s where an unknown killer stalks the light-stick twirling, drug-fueled beautiful bodies pressed together in Bacchanalian revelry.

I mean, we’ve all been there, right?

On the surface, it seems like a solid setup for a horror film. Raves back in the day were dark and filled with people unable or unwilling to pay attention. Honestly, I’m surprised more people weren’t murdered at raves, but that’s the subject for another article.

Unfortunately, Winn and the Hickmans never quite manage to bring it all together.

It all begins when Rachel and her boyfriend, Branson, arrive at the aforementioned rave, and they’re obviously having relationship issues. We see in flashbacks that Branson not only has a serious temper, but he’s found himself sucked into the world of conspiracy theories in the wake of a speech given by former President George H.W. Bush in which he outlined his idea about the “thousand points of light”.

President Bush also spoke of a New World Order in that same speech and Branson and his buddies have bought completely into the idea so much so that they’re ready to start a revolution…maybe?

Sara Bess as Rachel in Rave Party Massacre

The truth is none of what happens in the film is really explained until the credits begin to roll. It’s like they suddenly realized they didn’t give any real exposition so the audience would understand what or why anything had happened so they decided to throw information at them at the end in hopes that they wouldn’t notice.

The Bad News is we noticed; the Good News is…I still haven’t decided what the Good News is.

Either way, Rachel and Branson are definitely on their way to splitting up and the fact that they both end up hooking up with other people within five minutes of showing up to the rave cements that fact. A mysterious figure dressed in black and wearing a hyena mask is handing out drugs and everyone who takes them wakes up the next morning trapped inside the hospital as the man in the mask begins picking them off one at a time.

The script is pretty standard with more holes than good Swiss cheese and matching production values.

Why were these particular people chosen to be killed? Is it random? And why kill people from a rave?

The only thing that does make sense is that the rave is in a building that is set to be demolished the next day. (For younger readers who missed the rave scene in its heyday, the more dangerous the location, the better!)

Winn did give us one beautiful shot in the film when Rachel wakes up in a morgue drawer the morning after the rave. Her body seems to float in the darkness surrounded by a perfectly shaped coffin of light.

It was reminiscent of the oft-maligned Buried, and I’m not sure that Winn didn’t do the job better than that film’s director.

If you do decide to give Rave Party Massacre a try, do yourself a favor and watch the credits first. At the very least, you’ll know more about what’s going on in the film, even if the answers aren’t entirely satisfying.

For more information about the film you can follow them on Facebook and take a look at their official website.

Check out the trailer below and look for Rave Party Massacre on VOD and DVD on April 10 2018.

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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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