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[BD Review] ‘The Hunger Games’ Is Pretty D*mn Good!

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The Hunger Games

Lionsgate’s Gary Ross-directed adaptation of The Hunger Games hits theaters on March 23rd and the film is poised to be a massive hit. However, unlike many out of the box hits based on popular source material – this movie is actually pretty good! I’m actually kind of excited that there’s going to be a movie that makes hundreds of millions of dollars that actually has some respect for its audience.

Ultimately ‘The Hunger Games’ is almost a minor miracle. What could have been a quick and easy cash-in on an existing property is instead a carefully considered, thrilling and touching piece of populist entertainment. It’s sort of an exciting prospect that, for the first time in a long time, we’re going to have a pop culture “moment” centered around a film that actually made the effort to tell its story well (even though it’s a shame that this is now the exception to the rule).

In theaters March 23 from director Gary Ross, the film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Dayo Okeniyi, Amandla Stenberg, Chris Mark, Jacqueline Emerson, Wes Bentley, Lenny Kravitz, Toby Jones, and Stanley Tucci.

You can read the full review here.

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Do ‘Ready or Not’ and ‘Abigail’ Take Place in the Same Universe? Did You Spot This Connection?

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Abigail trailer

Both extremely bloody cat-and-mouse chases through massive mansions, Radio Silence’s horror movies Ready or Not and Abigail (now playing in theaters!) are certainly cut from the same cloth, but do they actually take place within a shared universe? It was a question the filmmakers were asked, and their response suggests that the answer to that question is YES.

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff asked the question of Radio Silence filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who co-directed both 2019’s Ready or Not and this year’s Abigail. As they point out, an Easter egg nestled within Abigail confirms a shared universe connection.

Bettinelli-Olpin tells Collider, “There is a portrait in the background of one of the scenes [in Abigail] of Henry Czerny’s [character from Ready or Not].” Gillet chimes in to clarify, “It would be a grandfather. A great, great, great, great grandfather [of Czerny’s character].”

Bettinelli-Olpin adds, “There is a little bit of a tied universe to Ready or Not within the movie.”

ready or not abigail

Actor Henry Czerny played the character Tony Le Domas in Radio Silence’s crowd-pleasing hit Ready or Not, the owner of the Le Domas Gaming Dominion and patriarch of the Le Domas family. The film centers on the Le Domas family’s deal with the devil to build their fortune, which Samara Weaving’s character Grace of course finds herself paying the price for.

If the Le Domas family exists in the world of Abigail, as the aforementioned portrait suggests, then that would indeed indicate that both films exist within the same bloody universe!

And it would seem there’s a deeper connection between the Le Domas family and the Lazar crime family introduced in Abigail. Have fun playing around with that idea. We know you will!

We’ll get you started. Is it possible that Abigail’s father is Mr. Le Bail from Ready or Not…?

In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”

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