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[SXSW Review] ‘Ghost Stories’ is an Effectively-Spooky Throwback to Hammer Classics

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Stories

If you are a fan of Hammer Films, you are in luck. The very British and somewhat William Castle aligned, Ghost Stories anthology film is going to be precisely your cup of tea.

Ghost Stories centralizes on Professor Goodman (Andy Nyman), a supernatural skeptic, out to disprove every bit of otherworldliness that shows its face in the public eye. After a long, successful track record of bringing down big name paranormal fakes, Goodman is asked by a personal hero to investigate and attempt to disprove three case files, described as “unexplainable.”

From there the film breaks off into an interesting exploration of science versus the unexplainable and the possibilities of an afterlife. Those themes are surveyed within the three cases.

Each case breaks down into its own ‘ghost story,’ told by one of three characters who believes they have had a truly supernatural experience. Each, story begins with Goodman taking note of each character’s details before diving into the spooky vignette of what occurred to them.

Each story plays out with its own chilling sequence of horrors ranging from things that go bump in the night to run ins with the supernatural inhabitants of the woods. Ghost Stories does a fantastic job making those elements hair-raising and even manage to sculpt a few good jump scares. The problem is that the stories within Ghost Stories, feel too short and almost incomplete. One second you are being invested in someone’s trauma; the next you are yanked away to someone else’s narrative. I would have liked to have seen more of each character’s story as opposed to being all too quickly shifted around.

Unlike, the majority of anthology films, this one’s wrap-around narrative is the focus of the whole thing, making the overall centralized skeptic plot the thing that eventually ties everything together for an interesting twist. While most of these kinds of films throw in a twist ending for funsies, Ghost Stories has one that is actually justified and in a way, changes the meaning of the stories in-between.

Stories

Ghost Stories is a much more serious film that I supposed it would be from its trailer. There are a few laughs peppered in occasionally but the brunt of the film is somber. It’s Hammer sensibilities make for a cut and dry-whited approach that has obvious reverence for the classics.

Writer/Directors, Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman deliver something that feels personal in its grander ideas. Along with that they manage to push engaging drama out alongside the things that go bump in the night. The deeply flawed and tortured characters are fleshed out in great detail through their pre-ghost story confessions. In addition, these guys do a heck of a job executing precise, suspenseful beats once they do dive into the spooky bits, making for a super well-rounded film experience.

Case number two, featuring Alex Lawther (Black Mirror, The End of the Fucking World) is my personal favorite of the bunch. Lawther’s fragile state as the psychologically haunted Simon Rifkind, is a fantastically disarming approach. Outside of the character, case number two is just plain scary from beginning to end. I definitely would have loved to see more of this one in particular. Excellent stuff, and something I’m going to have glued to the back of my skull the next time I’m driving down lonely country roads.

Ghost Stories is the first heady anthology that I can recall. What you are seeing the entire time might not necessarily be what is at face-value and I appreciate that as well as its bigger themes. Ghost Stories has the bones of a classic and is effectively terrifying. It has plenty of creeping flesh inducing moments complete with effective gags. As a collector and outright fan of anthologies, Ghost Stories is a good one that offers a nice twist on the genre.

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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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