check it out - beyond the black rainbow

pretty sweet, right? that's the trailer for beyond the black rainbow, the debut film from canadian filmmaker panos cosmatos. it premiered at the 2010 whistler film festival and is currently making the rounds at various other events.

beyond the black rainbow is set in a mysterious laboratory called the aboria institute, where a beautiful young girl named elena is held captive by a deranged doctor in search of inner peace. with her brain controlled by evil technology, she waits for her next session, unaware of her true potential. eventually, elena makes a break for it, journeying through the darkest expanses of the institution. however, her doctor won't easily part with his most gifted and dangerous creation.

if the epic trailer isn't enough, a title like beyond the black rainbow should pique the interest of even the most hardened of moviegoers. the film is a science fiction drug-induced atmospheric trance with disturbing horror elements and has been getting rave reviews thus far. definitely try to check it out once you get the chance!

check it out - entrance

what do you think? that's the trailer for the new horror film entrance, which debuted at the l.a. film festival back in june.

set in the silver lake district of los angeles, entrance follows a beautiful hipster barista who has grown disenchanted with the big city life. unable to connect with anyone other than her pet dog and tired of her job, she ponders leaving while a sense of dread takes over her life. she hears things in her house while she showers. guys stalk her on her way home. and then her dog goes missing. having had enough of the city lifestyle, she plans to return home to michigan. unfortunately, an uninvited guest crashes her farewell party and all hell breaks loose.

part psychological character study and part indie slasher flick, entrance is a "slow burn" type of movie with a big payoff. be on the lookout for it!

clock tower

have fun!

whereas most horror video games pay homage to zombies or beasts, clock tower moves to the beat of a different drum; the drum of a psychopathic child with a gigantic pair of garden shears! originally released in 1995, clock tower later spawned three sequels.

clock tower is different than many other games of this genre in that it relies heavily on a point-and-click interface and, as such, it translates to playing on the computer very well.

guide a young orphan named jennifer through her brand new home. having just been adopted along with her friends by a stern woman and her recluse of a husband, the girls are naturally eager to explore. however, not is all as it seems, because a kid with serious issues and a scary weapon is stalking the halls. use wits and solve puzzles to make it through the night alive. extract the game and use the snes emulator to play!

have fun!

check it out - alyce

welcome to the first installment of "check it out," where i hope to enlighten you and give you something to look forward to. pretty sweet video, huh? this is the trailer for the upcoming horror movie alyce, which is finally gearing up to debut at cannes this year.

the film revolves around best friends alyce and carroll, hipster chicks in l.a. with a taste for sex, booze, and drugs. after getting shitfaced, they head up to the roof of their building. bad idea! carroll falls several floors and is left in a vegetative state. alyce is relentlessly haunted by the memories and to shut them out, she finishes off her best friend. but that's only the beginning.

alyce is already getting lots of buzz on the internet and with a trailer and synopsis like that, i'm not surprised!

retrospect - scream

when the first scream came out during the holiday season of '96, it was anyone's guess that a slasher with a meager budget would become such a monster. it literally is the little movie that could.

i still remember when it hit theaters. it had been an awful decade for horror; everything had seemingly been done to death (pun intended) and producers were growing less and less likely to invest in a dying genre.

originally entitled scary movie, the first scream was penned by gay (natch) screenwriter kevin williamson, after being inspired by the heinous case of the gainesville ripper. the draft went up for sale in june of '95, which brought about an intense bidding war.

after finding a home with dimension (then a part of miramax,) the film was retitled scream and quickly went into production with a seasoned genre director at the helm, wes craven.

drew barrymore liked the script enough to agree to sign on for the lead role of sidney prescott. with a big name actress attached, scream finally started to gain momentum as casting began. when schedule conflicts would prevent barrymore from the lead role, she instead opted for a smaller but equally important part. other notable stars from popular sitcoms at the time rounded out the cast and cameras started rolling. a few months later, the film was released to rave reviews.

in essence, scream is a simple bare bones slasher about a person in a mask terrorizing a group of teenagers in a small town. what sets it apart from the other droves of guttural garbage (and this is coming from a horror fan,) is that scream reinvented the genre by breaking the fourth wall and defining the rules of survival.

scream starts off with what is undoubtedly one of the finest opening sequences of modern cinema and from then on it is a guessing game up until the blood-drenched finale. if you've yet to see it, there's a decent chance you're not originally from this planet.

shane has no shame - reapers

oh, snap...!

welcome to the first installment of "shane has no shame," where i plan to dispute any rumors that i am made of glass and show various compromising media solely for the purpose of your amusement!

i hope to start off with a bang with my first official screenplay entitled reapers, which centers on a young teenager who must contend with a group of cannibalistic murderers that descend on her hometown.

although this project took me only about two weeks to complete, it is still riddled with quite a few grammatical errors in conjunction with bad dialogue and a finale that wraps up entirely too quickly. feel free to laugh your ass off and bust my chops! that's the primary reason this section is here!

oh, snap...!