Sundance Review: Nine Days

by Murtada Elfadl

There’s a very fine between profound and superficial, what is genuinely revelatory and what is obvious. It’s a line that writer / director Edson Oda straddles in his sweeping drama about the meaning of life (yep, I know), Nine Days. Unfortunately to these eyes he ultimately falls on obvious and unearned, while asking the audience to believe it’s profound.  

Oda pulls us into a world wholly conceived by him. A man named Will (Winston Duke) who used to be alive now watches VHS tapes of people going on about their lives. When someone dies he gets nine days to interview unliving souls for the vacant position of a new life on earth...

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Year in Review: Horror Actoring of 2019

by Jason Adams

Since it's the second to last day of 2019 and we already named our "10 Favorite Horror Actresses of 2019" last week I figured I'd give us a last second bonus and shed some affection on the best fellas of the year. I know, I know, we're all all more inclined towards favoring the actresses... well, so's the genre to be frank. Horror really does favor female stories and experiences, and it was I will admit much easier to come up with last week's list. Besides the magnificent duo that anchors my favorite movie of the year I had to dig a little deeper for this one. But once I began rifling around I managed to uncover some gems...

Willem Dafoe & Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse 

When forced to choose between the two (and no thanks to Awards Season I have had to here and there) I tend to choose Dafoe, but only because his magnificent to-the-moon work is more straightforward... as straightforward as anything is in this topsy-turvy madhouse of a movie, at least. Pattinson's work is trickier -- his accent and behavior is all supposed to be wobbly, as his character's unformed; a liar trying to pour himself into a new shape. But make no mistake these are the two best male performances of 2019 slapping against each other in slippery tandem.

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YNMS: "It: Chapter Two"

by Jason Adams

Slip into your yellow rain-slickers and come play with me down in the gutter, as the final trailer for director Andy Muschietti's It: Chapter Two arrived last week and we're taking a belated gander. While I preferred the shorter teaser that primarily focused in on a single creepy scene with Jessica Chastain, (taking over the role of Beverly from the terrific Sophia Lillis) and an old lady who's clearly not the old lady she seems to be, this full trailer delivers plenty of the pitch-black shocks we expect from these hard R-rated sojourns into what some consider Stephen King's most terrifying tale...

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IT 2 Floats, Too

Chris here. IT simply won't stop making money, recently passing The Exorcist has the highest grossing horror film in history (not adjusted for inflation, that is - no way Pennywise gets close to threatening Pazuzu's reign there). You would think that an announcement for a Chapter Two follow-up would have arrived much faster in this age of pre-planned sequels, but Warner Bros. just made it official: the latter half of Stephen King's massive text will come to the screens on September 6, 2019.

Director Andres Muschietti is expected to return to the sequel, which features the same characters all grown-up and returning to Derry to combat Pennywise's fated return. We can also expect Bill Skargård to come back for more clown eleganza extravaganza for his (underpraised, in my estimation) turn as Pennywise. But who can we hope to take on the adult Losers from the lively teen cast?

One name that has been bandied about is Jessica Chastain to replace the breakout actress Sophia Lillis as Beverly. Chastain has already gotten spooky for Muschietti in Mama and has remained supportive of the director, so I wouldn't consider it out of the question. Surely with the massive box office haul major names like Chastain could be more likely to appear unlike your standard genre fare - this is the makings of a major blockbuster sequel. If the film takes place roughly 27 years after the events of the first film, what ~40 year old actors would you like to see take over the IT sequel?

5 Takeaways from the Success of "It"

By Spencer Coile 

After two short weeks and hundreds of millions of dollars later, It is nothing short of a 2017 phenomenon. I work part-time at a movie theater, and have never witnessed anything quite like It. For instance, in its first weekend alone, I worked through seventeen showings of It, where all seventeen sold out -- the last show selling out so quickly, there was still a line outside and wrapped around the building. And my little theater in Indiana is no outlier: Muschietti's dance with a devilish clown has already coughed up $218 million in its first two weeks (earning back its entire budget in one day). And considering the film's genre and its R-rating, this is wholly unprecedented.  

This has led many (myself included) to ask: what did Muschietti and the entire production team for It do right?

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