Editorials
[2012 HORROR MOVIE PREVIEW] LIONSGATE
I hadn’t realized it until just now – and it’s kind of a shocker – Lionsgate didn’t release a single horror film in 2011. The mini major has been known for releasing a slew of genre pics every year, anchored by their franchise moneymaker Saw. With no Saw for October, the year didn’t even carry any garnish.
What does 2012 look like? Thankfully, the Gate is returning to their horrific ways kicking the year off with The Cabin in the Woods. And while many of their genre productions aren’t yet slated for release, there are an abundance of titles to be extremely excited for. Check out the 2012 preview after the break. What are you most pumped to see?
[LIONSGATE FILMS] 2012 HORROR MOVIE PREVIEW
PARAMOUNT / SUMMIT / UNIVERSAL / RANDOM BIG STUDIOS / INDIE
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The pic is set in post-apocalyptic America, Hunger Games introduces 16-year-old heroine Katniss Everdeen, who must participate in a fight-to-the-death annual event called the Hunger Games. The battles are televised, and pit youths from each of the Capitol’s 12 Districts against each other.
‘Thor’s’ Chris Hemsworth stars as a young professional who visits a quaint cabin in the woods with a group of friends and ends up scratching the surface of something so massive and horrific that they can only begin to fathom it as time quickly runs out.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan will star as a recently divorced father whose youngest daughter becomes strangely connected to an antique wooden box she purchased at a yard sale. As his daughter’s behavior becomes more erratic, the father senses a dark presence building until he discovers that the box was built to contain a dibbuk — a dislocated spirit that inhabits and ultimately devours its human host.
The seventh incarnation is a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s classic 1974 film that follows the lead character, Heather, who along with her friends, travel to Texas in order to collect an inheritance. The spin? What would you do if you found out your cousin was Leatherface, and he was now YOURS?
In ‘You’re Next’ the Davison family comes under attack from a terrifying group of sadistic murderers during a family reunion getaway. Barricaded in their secluded vacation home, they fight off a barrage of axes, crossbows and machetes from both inside and outside the house. However, the masked killers didn’t count on Erin (Vinson), the young girlfriend of the eldest Davison son whose mysterious past has made her very difficult to kill.
By day Abby Russell is a dedicated nurse, someone you wouldn’t hesitate to trust your life with. But by night, her real work begins…using her smoldering sexuality she lures cheating men to their brutal deaths and exposes them for who they really are. When a younger nurse starts to suspect Abby’s actions and compromises her master plan, Abby must find a way to outsmart her long enough to bring the cheater you’d least expect to justice.
‘Silent Hill: Revelation 3D,’ based on the acclaimed survival horror video game franchise by KONAMI , is a sequel to Hadida and Carmody’s earlier collaboration, Christophe Gans’ ‘Silent Hill.’ For years, Heather Mason and her father have been on the run, always one step ahead of dangerous forces that she doesn’t fully understand. Now on the eve of her 18th birthday, plagued by terrifying nightmares and the disappearance of her father, Heather discovers she’s not who she thinks she is. The revelation leads her deeper into a demonic world that threatens to trap her in Silent Hill forever.
On the 4th of July in 2012, an unprecedented biological disaster is unleashed from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. An isopod parasite, carrying untreatable, mutated diseases, jumps from fish to human host and replaces them with itself. Seven years later, the true horror and scope of the event, captured mainly on home videos by the town’s now long-dead victims, is revealed to the public for the first time…
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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