This is a fantastic article dealing with people’s desires to watch the hardest things possible and linking to many other commentaries such as this one on Salo. It deals with the concept of fandom and why someone who doesn’t watch A Serbian Film isn’t any less of an enthusiast for the genre. In other words: It’s perfectly okay to not watch images of disgust (Because really, who wants to do that?) It’s very pertinent when it comes to horror fans who trade in the most extreme films.

Filed under: News | No Comments »

I’m checking this out tomorrow night but it’s worth noting that something odd happened at the box office this weekend. Paranormal Activity 3 apparently smashed it. It’s rare to see a horror film do this much business in a single weekend, let alone the third in franchise it’s critics call a one-trick pony.

To put this in perspective, let’s take a look at the first 3 films in the Saw franchise, which most people agree is the dominant horror franchise of the past decade.

The first Saw made $103 million worldwide with $55 of that coming domestically. Paranormal Activity made $193 million worldwide with $108 being domestic. Also consider that PA was a word of mouth flick not given a traditional wide release immediately.

Saw, of course, was a huge hit and its sequel showed that. The sequel grabbed about $148 million worldwide, with $87 of that being domestic. It’s opening weekend was about $32 million, large for a horror film, for sure. So how did PA2 stack up to that? Quite nicely. The sequel grabbed $177 million worldwide, nearly thirty million more than the highly decorated Saw 2. It also stacked up just about even domestically with about $85 million. It’s opening weekend put Saw 2 to shame with a haul of $41 million.

The verdict is still out on how well PA3 will do. After all, it’s only been out for two days. It could drop like an anvil next weekend. But if the $50 million dollar opening weekend holds, that puts it well ahead of Saw 3‘s opening weekend of $34 million (which was about the same as Saw 2′s opening with higher ticket prices. Part of the phenomenon of Saw was it’s quirky ability to open with complete stability over and over, which helped make it a venerable franchise). It wasn’t until the fourth film that Saw began seeing noticeable diminishing returns (though still hugely profitable in movie terms). To put PA3′s opening weekend into even more perspective, Green Lantern opened at $53 million. So it’s operating in superhero film range.

Let’s also not forget that though the budgets for both franchises are extremely small (part of the reason they are successes regardless of diminishing returns), the PA films are dramatically different from the Saw films. The first Saw and PA were dead even, right around a million dollars. PA2 stayed around that range whereas Saw 2 moved into the $4 million range. After that, the Saw films average $10 million for their budgets (with Saw 3-D coming in at $20). The Saw films also had massive marketing campaigns that probably added at least double to those production budgets, if not more. I think it’s safe to say, as of now anyway, that the PA films have been more successful financially.

So what am I saying? Well, it appears just based on numbers that Paranormal Activity could well be on its way to usurping Saw as the dominant horror franchise of this century. It has a long way to go. A lot will depend on how well PA3 holds over the next month. Is it front loaded, or is it genuinely scaring the crap out of people to keep word of mouth going? It would also have to hold up over four more movies. Can it make it? I dunno. But I was kind of taken aback when I actually looked at the numbers and compared the two franchises. Is Paranormal Activity actually more popular than Saw? To me, that’s weird to think about. The default answer would be “Of course not” but right now, I think the answer is “yes”. I don’t know if it will have the longevity of Saw, but it’s certainly on its way. There are so many variables (changing ticket prices, weekend competition, release dates, the zeitgeist), but the numbers right now seem to tell the tale. My review of PA3 on Monday’s Splattercast, by the way.

P.S. Can we please get an actual sequel to Paranormal Activity? I want to know what happened to Katie (and her boobs) at the end of the first!

Filed under: Commentary, News | 3 Comments »

Rotten Tomatoes is crazy overrated (see how I did that?) in terms of “ranking” films on percentages, but hey, people like that kind of instant information. For what it’s worth, they’ve ranked the top 75 horror films using their tomatometer. The Exorcist comes in at #75. That should probably tell you something. But lists are fun, so why not?

The nice thing about RT lists is that they always have the classics listed.

Filed under: News | 8 Comments »

Elgoro and Cancer Man of Talk Without Rhythm were kind enough to ask Steve and I to guest host on their show. We talked about The Golden Child and The Gate while diverting into the topic of video game movies.

So give it a listen and thanks to both those guys for having us on!

Filed under: Dead Lantern News | 2 Comments »

Deadbolt is the first film in our monthly anthology, Shivers Down Your Spine. It premieres right here on our website this Halloween (cross your fingers, lol). I just got our footage today and have been going through it. Here are some screenshots from the film itself. Stay tuned!

(more…)

Filed under: Dead Lantern Media, Dead Lantern News, Shivers Down Your Spine | 2 Comments »

Rare Exports is a flick from Finland, once again being promoted and marketed as a horror film, but that really isn’t at all. I was first interested in this because I was under the impression that it was a killer Santa Claus flick. The trailer looked cool and there has been some sweet fantasy/horror stuff coming out of Scandinavia lately (or should I say Fenno-Scandinavia?) like  Troll Hunter. So I fired this up looking forward to some sweet evil Santa awesomeness. Did I get it?

(more…)

Filed under: Reviews | 2 Comments »

The Human Centipede was a 30 minute premise stretched to feature length status. It had a great villainous turn by Dieter Laser and a genuinely gross concept. The film itself wasn’t all that graphic (or good) but it horrified housewives all over the country by getting a release on Redbox and being available on the shelves of places like Target. For a film billed as “out there”, it was pretty amazing to see it so easily available to the unaware masses. The film was much ado about nothing, but that didn’t stop director Tom Six for putting a sequel into production and guaranteeing that it would show what the first film didn’t show and be the most “disturbing” film ever made. It helped that the prudes in England decided the film was so extreme as to not give it a classification (Six has thus cut the movie by 3 minutes himself to get the release). Explodey Jo had mentioned that she heard that HC2 was cut here in America. I checked the wiki page and it says the international cut is 87 minutes (U.K. is 84) and my version was indeed 87 minutes, so I am assuming I saw the uncut version. So, did my head asplode?

No. Long story short, this movie sucks. It’s not even particularly disturbing or gory compared to other movies. Let me explain….

(more…)

Filed under: Reviews | 5 Comments »

I remember hearing about Kevin Smith’s Red State when we first started the Splattercast nearly 6 years ago. It sounded weird, that Kevin Smith would do horror, but it’s always interesting to see a director get out of their comfort zone and do something very different from what they are known for. Smith is one of those super polarizing figures. Because he’s such a bombastic personality and is always “in the discussion” because of his wide visibility in terms of his site and podcast, it’s very easy to get sucked up in loving or hating the personality. In typical Smith fashion, he took the attention away from Red State the film with a much maligned and criticized, and staged, fake auction in which he bought the rights to distribute his film himself. Part of his “message” was to say “screw you” to the distributors and subvert the traditional Hollywood distribution model. Nevermind the fact that indie filmmakers have been doing that for 60 years or that the evil Hollywood distribution machine has given thousands of indie horror films an avenue to be seen for those who just don’t have the time or resources to do it on their own like millionaire Kevin Smith. I bring this up in the review only because it feels like it’s part of the whole Red State thing. Not only has Smith spent the last 6 years telling everyone and everyone that his movie is a horror film (even marketing it to horror websites), but also that the film is supposed to be held up as some sort of martyr of self-distribution. The reality is: If your name is Kevin Smith, your movie is going to be widely available. I feel like the whole drama surrounding Red State is incredibly hypocritical and disingenuous. And it’s all this extra artificial drama, all created by Kevin Smith, that clouds and surrounds the film like a force field. If a viewer hates it, then it’s because they hate Kevin Smith, not because they hate the film. In a way, it’s a pre-emptive excuse and defense mechanism for Smith fans towards anyone who would criticize the film, legitimately. It’s actually a great ploy, if you’re Smith. And yeah, I believe it’s all by design. But anyway, Kevin Smith apparently didn’t have a hard time getting his movie streaming on the 25 million+ subscriber Netflix service and so when I was notified it was available, I took a look….

(more…)

Filed under: Reviews | 5 Comments »