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‘Channel Zero: Candle Cove’ is a Creepy Change of Pace for SyFy

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These days, when you think of SyFy’s original horror offerings, you might think of the campy, self-aware “Z Nation,” or the ultra-cheesy, ultra self-aware “Sharknado” film series. And hey, if that’s your thing, more power to you.

For those of us that love creepy, unsettling, slow-burn horror, SyFy’s latest original series is a breath of fresh air. The anthology series will feature a different story each season, similar to “American Horror Story.” Season 2 has already been greenlit with a whole other story.

The inspiration for the show is what’s known as a creepypasta — a play on “copypasta,” which is a play on “copypaste” — a scary story that started on the internet, and was shared on various forums such as Reddit and 4chan, something of a modern-day urban legend. The inspiration for Season 1 was “Candle Cove,” one of the creepier creepypastas out there. You can read the original story here, but beware: It reveals a major spoiler for the first episode of the series. Season two will revolve around another famous creepypasta: “No-End House.”

‘Why Are You Afraid to Come Home?’

The first season, which will have six episodes, follows Mike Painter, a famous child psychologist who returns to his hometown of Iron Hill, Ohio, after many years. As a child, Mike’s twin brother Eddie disappeared, along with four other children. The other kids were found dead in the woods, with their teeth missing — but Eddie was nowhere to be found. Mike’s family fell apart and he ended up in a foster home, never returning to Iron Hill until now.

To say that memories of Eddie and his disappearance still haunt Mike is an understatement. We see early on that he’s estranged from his wife and child after he recently suffered a mental breakdown. Furthermore, we learn that he’s been having nightmares in which a young Eddie calls him to ask when he’s coming home. Interlaced with his nightmares are references to “Candle Cove” — a creepy, low-budget puppet show that Mike and Eddie used to watch in the ’80s, which Mike believes is somehow related to the child murders.

Channel Zero: Candle Cove on SyFy

You Have to Go Inside

The Candle Cove scenes really help to add to the atmosphere. Whereas “Stranger Things” captured our nostalgia for the ’80s with a rocking soundtrack and a group of lovable kids playing Dungeons & Dragons and cruising around on their bikes, Candle Cove takes that nostalgia in a much darker direction.

The children’s show Mike remembers was an odd, unsettling pirate show featuring characters like Jawbone, a pirate skeleton who tells the main character that he’s going to skin her. It looks like a very rough, low-budget Sid and Marty Krofft ripoff, and like many children’s shows featuring puppets, it’s pretty unsettling when you watch it as an adult.

Candle Cove was only on a local TV station for a short time in 1988. During that time period, kids in Iron Hill started to disappear. After Eddie went missing and the bodies were found, the show stopped…until Mike returns to Iron Hill, and discovers it’s back on the air. Naturally, another child disappears shortly after mentioning the show to Mike, and his recent history makes him the prime suspect. To add to the creep factor, as Mike delves into the mystery, we really don’t know if he’s a reliable narrator at all.

Unlike some of the more in-your-face horror films and shows, “Channel Zero” is a slow burn that builds up the creep factor inch by inch. The more bits and pieces we see from Candle Cove, and the more we learn about the back story and its connections to the murders, the more unsettling it becomes. Creator Nick Antosca handles Kris Staub’s source material with great care, and does a fantastic job using the mythology as a foundation while building a compelling story upon it.

The first episode, titled “You Have to Go Inside,” is available on demand. New episodes air Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. on SyFy.

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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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