Emperor

When Beetlejuice first hit cinemas in 1988, it was a weird, wonderful, and wildly original experience. Tim Burton’s dark yet playful aesthetic, Michael Keaton’s chaotic performance as the titular ghost, and the film’s quirky humor combined to create something truly special. Beetlejuice became a cult classic, a film that embodied Burton’s trademark balance of the macabre and the whimsical while introducing a unique world that spawned an equally unique and dedicated fandom.

Now, more than 35 years later, the Beetlejuice sequel has arrived, and like so many remakes before it, it’s struggling to capture the essence that made the original so beloved.

The sequel brings everything you would expect in the way of nostalgia but also an influx of brand partnerships: a whopping 35 in total. While brand collaborations are nothing new, Beetlejuice 2 has taken cues from the successful marketing strategy of Barbie, leveraging creative partnerships that aim to enhance the viewer’s experience. The key phrase being ‘aim to’.

The film has been criticized for tipping the balance, with some fans feeling the brand integrations are too heavy-handed. This turns the movie into more of a commercial showcase than a sequel that speaks honestly to a dedicated fandom that has embraced the original for decades.

Since lemmy.film went down, the only horror movie community is on lemmy.ml and is a bit quiet (possibly because it's on lemmy.ml), so, just in time for Halloween, let me present, for your spooky cinematic sights, your dark delights and your devilish delectations:

[email protected]

Earlier this week, a rumor went around alleging Warner Bros. was looking to start up a new Goonies movie. It sounded slightly official thanks to claiming the original cast was set to return, Steven Spielberg (creator of the first film’s story) would direct, and that this would-be film was set for release sometime in 2026 or 2027. Things were further exacerbated by Sean Astin—or rather, whoever runs his social media—seemingly putting his support behind it. But it’s not to be, as fellow original stars Corey Feldman and Martha Plimpton shot that rumor down hard. Feldman said he had “no info” of any sequel in the works, while Plimpton was more direct in her words.

“There’s no Goonies 2 script, there’s no one attached. Spielberg is not directing, it’s not real,” she said on Instagram. What IS real is CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION AND VOTE!!!!”

Much like with Beetlejuice 2, there’ve been plenty of rumors and hopes over the years of a new Goonies movie coming to fruition. After the cast reunited for a virtual COVID-19 fundraiser in 2020, Spieberg admitted he’s talked over potential sequel ideas with co-writer Chris Columbus, the late director Richard Donner, and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, but they never settled on anything concrete. Funnily enough, there’s a show about the Goonies movie in the works called Our Time, but as far as an actual continuation, it seems those dreams will have to stay dreams.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17581294

The new horror and science fiction anthology, “Deepest, Darkest,” has added yet another cast mate to its already stellar lineup of genre heavyweights.

Rahul Kohli, a beloved member of Mike Flanagan’s Flanaverse (“The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “The Fall of the House of Usher”) and essential teammate in the crime-solving “iZombie” series, has officially joined the star-studded cast of “Deepest, Darkest,” a new horror anthology from writer and director Marc Bernardin and actor Tiffany Smith.

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Kohli joins the previously announced cast of Smith (“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”), Rosario Dawson (“The Mandalorian,” “Ahsoka”), Ernie Hudson (“Ghostbusters”), Yetide Badaki (“American Gods”), Phil LaMarr (“Futurama,” “Samurai Jack”) and “Quantum Leap” stars Raymond Lee and Caitlin Bassett.

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The anthology promises a genre-blending mix of horror, dark comedy, suspense and sci-fi, with a pitch that reads: “Have you ever had a secret? One so big, so awful, so horrifically extreme that you had no choice but to keep it to yourself? Something that if anyone else knew, that revelation would shift your world on its axis? What if there was someone whose job it was to listen to those secrets — because she could never remember them? What would you pay for absolution?”

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The film is currently raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign, which has raised $128,000 toward its $250,000 goal. “Kickstarter is always a gamble,” says Bernardin. “But I believe there’s an audience out there that might embrace a collection of cinematic short stories that aim to thrill and scare and provoke while also celebrating voices who don’t often get to be at the center of narratives like this.”

The owner of Framestore, the special effects powerhouse behind the visuals in many Marvel movies, has revealed that it is still reeling from the strikes which gripped Hollywood for more than six months last year and caused its revenue to plummet by $46.7 million to $665.6 million.

Framestore has worked on more than ten movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe including all of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and next year's Fantastic Four. It is in a prime position to get the work as it is the leading SFX agency in the United Kingdom where many Marvel movies are shot due to the lucrative government incentives on offer to studios.

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The dark clouds began to gather in May last year when writers downed their tools in a bid to boost their pay and royalties from streaming shows. They were followed by actors two months later and although the curtain came down on the dispute in November, by then studios had delayed the release dates of many movies including this year's chart-topper Deadpool & Wolverine, which Framestore also worked on.

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The financial statements confirm that "due to the challenges faced by the group arising from the writers’ and actors’ strike an impairment of $19,852,000 has been recognised in the year ended 31 December 2023 against the investment held in Infinity Bidco Limited."

The value was written down despite an improvement in the fortunes of Framestore's direct operating company Guidedraw, which retained its value. Its revenue rose 8.1% to $376.2 million in 2023 as the decline in business from North America was more than offset by an increase from British productions which were not part of the Hollywood strikes. Combined with careful cost control, this helped it to generate a $7.9 million operating profit, up from a $6.3 million loss in 2022.

Archive

Blumhouse’s 2025 lineup seems to be spitting in the face of originality with Megan 2.0, An Untitled Insidious Movie, The Black Phone 2, and Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2 all expected to release. And who knows what foreign remake they’ll target now that Speak No Evil is a nice little success. This is why it’s on us as the audience to seek out great cinema and not go simply because it’s the weekend’s new release. The studio and Indie world will just become more and more intermingled as we lose out on more and more mid-tier films. And we just have to hope that those meddling execs who usually focus on the bigger fare, don’t start setting their sights on their low-budget offerings. Because otherwise, horror is doomed.

Now, I fully acknowledge that Indie Horror is capable of being absolute shit. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to all the awful films that get made on a daily basis. And sometimes too much creativity and lack of supervision can be a bad thing. But I will take something that’s trying to fulfill some kind of creative niche versus solely trying to eek out a profit. Longlegs, Cuckoo, and Strange Darling are amongst the year’s best and they are completely original works where the filmmakers were allowed to see their vision through. And I’ll take that over a bloodless CGI bear.

One of the most hotly anticipated horror movies in the remainder of September is the action-horror movie Azrael starring Samara Weaving (Ready or Not, Scream VI), in theaters September 27. While you wait, IFC Films has debuted a first-look clip via Rotten Tomatoes.

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The high concept action-horror film from Republic Pictures stars Samara Weaving and was directed by E.L. Katz (Channel Zero, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Cheap Thrills) from an original script by Simon Barrett (The Guest, You’re Next, Godzilla x Kong).

“In a world in which no one speaks, a devout female-led community hunts down a young woman (Weaving) who has escaped her imprisonment. Recaptured by its ruthless leaders, Azrael is to be sacrificed to pacify an ancient evil that resides deep within the surrounding wilderness – yet she will stop at nothing to ensure her own freedom and survival.

“From the seeds of this gritty, relentless parable of sacrifice and salvation, comes an immersive, real-time, action horror tale.”

Clip

It's around here that a normal review would subtly transition to a summary of the plot. Unfortunately, Megalopolis is such a rambling, boring slog, I'm not sure I grasped the story writer and director Francis Ford Coppola actually had in mind.

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Inaccessible to the point of satire, Megalopolis also tarnishes Coppola's legacy. This is no Godfather. It is not The Rainmaker. It's not even Jack. It is, however, among the worst big-budget productions ever made — a late-career echo of Heaven's Gate, the sprawling vanity project by The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino that was so monumentally awful it ruined Hollywood's trust in auteur directors for decades.

With mostly his own money at stake, Coppola's latest may not have as big an effect on the future of film. But navel-gazey to the point of irresponsibility, sanctimonious to the point of insulting, Megalopolis is still a cautionary tale — though not about the entropic nature of empires and civilization. It's a warning about what too much money, too much self-seriousness and too little editing can do to an artist.

The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2024 Toronto Film Festival has gone to The Life of Chuck, first runner-up is Emilia Pérez, and second runner-up is Anora. The Documentary Award goes to The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, and the Midnight Madness winner is The Substance.

Both runners-up Emilia Pérez and Anora were big winners at Cannes in May (the latter taking the Palme d’Or), but Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck was a TIFF world premiere and a surprise winner of this award.

Tom Hiddleston stars in the film based on King’s novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz. It is an unusual winner here for this award as it currently is looking for distribution and has no set release date, which means it could be the first People’s Choice winner in recent memory to not be currently considered a contender in the 2024 awards-season race. It has been called “an apocalyptic version of It’s a Wonderful Life,” and no doubt this award will speed up a distribution deal for the movie, which is atypical of King’s bread and butter but closer in spirit to the likes of movies like Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, which both went on to Oscar nominations for Best Picture.

The Archival Producers Alliance (APA), a volunteer group of more than 300 documentary producers and researchers formed in response to concerns over the use of generative AI in nonfiction film, developed the guidelines over the course of a year, after publishing an open letter in the Hollywood Reporter demanding more guardrails for the industry. The guidelines, announced at the Camden Film Festival, are not intended to dismiss the possibilities of a technology that is already shaping all forms of visual storytelling, but to “to reaffirm the journalistic values that the documentary community has long held”.

“In a world where it is becoming difficult to distinguish between a real photograph and a generated one, we believe it’s absolutely pivotal to understand the ways generative AI could impact nonfiction storytelling,” said Stephanie Jenkins, APA’s co-director, in a statement.

Dozens of prominent documentary film organizations endorsed the guidelines at launch, including the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) and the International Documentary Association (IDA), as well as over 50 individual film-makers such as Michael Moore, Ken Burns and Rory Kennedy.

“Documentary is a truth-seeking art practice, but the nature of truth has always been mutable,” Dominic Willsdon, executive director of the IDA, said. “GenAI will bring all sorts of new and profound mutations, some fruitful, some harmful.” APA’s guidelines “can help the documentary field navigate this first phase of wider AI adoption”.

Rather than rejecting the use of generative AI outright, the group encourages consideration based in four overarching principles: the value of primary sources, transparency, legal considerations and ethical considerations of creating human simulations.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17484663

The 2020s have already been great for folk horror, but the current folk horror revival really got its start in the previous decade. The niche subgenre, which had been around since the 1960s and 1970s, didn't get a name until actor Mark Gatiss of Sherlock fame used the term "folk horror" in 2010 to describe a trio of influential films in his BBC documentary series, A History of Horror. Suddenly, a generation of writers and filmmakers who had grown up on the old British films and television programs were inspired to revisit the rural terrors of their youth.

Folk horror, which was initially recognized as a British phenomenon, became closely associated with imagery from the British Isles, such as stone circles, druids, and the green man. However, the modern folk horror revival has been more inclusive, as filmmakers from around the world draw inspiration from their countries' history and folklore. From Indonesia to Austria, these are the best folk horror movies of the 2010s.

1. Midsommar (2019)
2. Kill List (2011)
3. The Witch (2015)
4. The Borderlands (2013)
5. The Wailing (2016)
6. The Ritual (2017)
7. Impetigore (2019)
8. La Llorona (2019)
9. Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse (2017)
10. A Dark Song (2016)

Warning: the image used dod The Ritual is a massive spoiler - go watch it first, it's worth going in blind.

See also:

• 10 best Folk Horror movies of the 2020s (so far)

Following a group of small-town, DIY Indian filmmakers, Reema Kagti‘s “Superboys of Malegaon” is a moving crowd-pleaser that constantly reaffirms its importance through its central theme. Although the film, which is based on real events, often tries to cover too much ground, it continually circles back to the idea that people must see themselves reflected in art, not just out of want, but out of deep desire stemming from need, in order to live with dignity.

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In adding years of context to each decision leading up to this superhero spoof, Varun Grover’s script also adds indelible (and tragic) context to the documentary, as well as the parody film it portrays, while transforming the film’s own tale of scrappy creativity into a spiritually moving look at the meaning of cinematic images, and the immortality they offer. Its shattering climax makes for a wonderful complement to Spanish maestro Victor Erice’s recent comeback, “Close Your Eyes,” which is no easy feat.