Movies
Does This ‘Black Rock’ Trailer Insult The Very Institution Of Horror*?
*My headline has been misconstrued as being 100% serious. I’d like to clarify that it’s only 62.3% serious. Obviously there’s a little bit of sarcasm involved when I say something uber-portentous like “The Very Institution Of Horror.” Anyway, Black Rock, director Katie Aselton’s survival horror tale, “follows three childhood friends as they set aside their personal issues and reunite for a girls’ weekend on a remote island off the coast of Maine. One wrong move turns their weekend getaway into a deadly fight for survival.”
The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year and I was surprised by the negative reaction. I mean, the pedigree is really good! Written by Mark Duplass (Baghead, Jeff, Who Lives At Home, Cyrus) and directed by Aselton (whose film The Freebie is actually supposed to be pretty good), you’d think that this would be the kind of thing where people with dramatic/comedy chops get a chance to do something fresh with horror. But everything I’ve heard – and the trailer backs this up – is that this is an unfortunate case of people who think they’re above the genre “slumming” in it for various reasons. Perhaps ineloquently, I summed up my feelings on it here almost a year ago.
Ryan Daley’s admittedly mixed-to-positive review says “There’s plenty of nail-biting tension in ‘Black Rock’, but that tension fades with every stupid decision the characters make, and audience frustration eventually builds to the bursting point. It‘s one of those movies that makes you want to yell at the screen.”
Again, I haven’t seen Black Rock – but I will and I have every intention of giving it a fair chance when I do. I hope I love it, but I haven’t felt this irked by a movie sight-unseen in some time.
Head inside to check out the trailer.
Movies
‘Ebenezer’ Official Trailer – Ti West Turns Johnny Depp into ‘A Christmas Carol’ Icon Scrooge
Ti West (X, Pearl, MaXXXine) is back with the upcoming Ebenezer starring Johnny Depp, a fresh new take on the classic tale of A Christmas Carol from Charles Dickens.
Johnny Depp will play Ebenezer Scrooge in Ti West’s Ebenezer, and Paramount is bringing the film to theaters on November 13, 2026. Watch the official trailer down below.
The tagline? “The name you know. The story you don’t.”
Andrea Riseborough (Possessor), Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings), Tramell Tillman (“Severance”), Rupert Grint (Harry Potter franchise), Daisy Ridley (Star Wars franchise), Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games franchise), Charlie Murphy (“Peaky Blinders”), Arthur Conti (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), and Ellie Bamber (“Willow”) also star.
Deadline had detailed in a recent report, “This version, a thrilling ghost story set in Dickens’ London, follows one man’s supernatural journey to face his past, present and future and fight for a second chance. Stephen Deuters and Jason Forman to executive produce.”
Nathaniel Halpern wrote the adaptation for Ti West to direct.
Written by Charles Dickens, the classic tale of A Christmas Carol has been adapted for the screen countless times over the years, with notable film adaptations including Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim, Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney, A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott, Scrooged (1988) starring Bill Murray, The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine, and A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey.
A Christmas Carol is classically a period piece ghost story. As Luiz H.C. wrote here on Bloody Disgusting, “Isn’t it weird how the single most influential piece of Christmas-related media is technically a horror story? One can even make the argument that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol paved the way for the rise of Victorian Spiritualism during the following decade.”
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