Movies
[Sundance ’12]: ‘Grabbers’ First Clip High On Character, Low On Octopus
Pegged as Waking Dead meets Tremors, with tentacles, Jon Wright directs the Irish horror comedy Grabbers that stars Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley and Russell Tovey in a film that takes to “a sleepy Irish fishing village forced to fend off a blood-sucking sea creature.”
Earlier this month we landed an exclusive first look at the film and now Twitchfilm has landed a clip from the movie.
I think the clip shows a nice strength of economy in terms of both setting up the characters and the tone of the piece. It’s nice to see indie filmmakers embracing the jaunty spirit that studios used to allow in their horror comedies more often in the 1980’s. Nothing wrong with a horror film being fun.
Hit the jump to check it out!
Sundance Screening Schedule:
Wednesday, January 25th at 6:30pm- Eccles Theatre, Park City
Thursday, January 26th at 9:00am- Eccles Theatre, Park City
Saturday, January 28th at 8:30am- MARC, Park City
Saturday, January 28th at 9:00pm- Salt Lake City Library, SLC
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
You must be logged in to post a comment.