Exclusives
BD Playlist: Bree Vol. 2
Frog Eyes – Tears Of The Valedictorian
This song. THIS SONG. You’ve all had an experience with music in which you never wanted it to end because you knew you would never feel that high again, yea? That’s this song for me. You will never feel as good as you do the first time you listen to “Bushels.” It’s pretty unassuming at first. But when that piano riff starts about 15 seconds in, good luck climbing out of the deep, emotional whirlpool you just fell into. Carey Mercer will wrap his trembling voice around your heart and break it, over and over again in the course of 9 minutes. Like, “Emily” from my first BD Playlist, “Bushels” touches on a wide variety of emotions: dark ones, manic ones, uplifting ones, hopeful ones. The instrumentals are all over the place and they are utterly relentless. But they fit tight, like a world-weary puzzle, a puzzle that says: I’ve seen some shit. And as with most every Frog Eyes’ song, there’s an astute understanding of its self-importance. It’s a very self-referential song, ending on the words, “I was a singer, and I sang in your home.” Which is oddly frightening because for a second you think, “Whoa! How did you know?” And that’s the precise moment you realize you’ve been sucked in and Mercer owns you.
A gnarly infection threatens to claw its way out of a moving camper in the first trailer for Shudder’s claustrophobic Hellcat.
The feature debut of writer/editor/director Brock Bodell, who previously edited the Fantasia title Ultrasound, makes its debut on Shudder on August 14.
In Hellcat, “Lena wakes up in a moving camper trailer with a horrifying wound. She’s warned by the driver that they have one hour to get to a doctor, or she’ll succumb to an unimaginably awful fate. As the pain sets in and reality begins to fray, who should really be afraid?”
Dakota Gorman (Natural Disasters) leads the cast that also includes Todd Terry (“Breaking Bad”), Liz Atwater (The Other People), Jordan Mullins (The Bikeriders), and James Austin Johnson (“Saturday Night Live”) in a voice role. Bodell also produces alongside Andrew Duensing and Nate Eggert.
Hellcat made its world premiere last summer at Fantasia. I wrote in my review, “Hellcat is a bit of a Trojan horror that defies easy classification, by design. Bodell’s sneaky debut feature is occasionally too sparse in its worldbuilding in its bid to preserve the mystery, but not enough to detract from the thrilling road thriller that transforms into a completely left-field type of horror we don’t get nearly enough of. The stripped-down tribute to a classic horror staple catches you off guard in more ways than one, marking Bodell as one to watch.”
In other words, there’s a lot more than meets the eye to Hellcat‘s simple infection setup, delivering plenty of surprises along its bumpy road of horrors.
Check out the trailer and poster below and add Hellcat to your watchlists asap.
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