Movies
Timo Tjahjanto Heads Back to Hell with ‘May the Devil Take You Too’
If you’re a fan of Timo Tjahjanto‘s Sam Raimi-esque May the Devil Take You (read our review), which is currently streaming on Netflix as of last year, the filmmaker has revealed he’s getting back behind the camera for the sequel May the Devil Take You Too.
The film follows Alfie (Chelsea Islan; Headshot) a depressed solitary young woman discovering her estranged bedridden father, Lesmana (Ray Sahetapy of The Raid). Alfie journeys to Lesmana’s villa trying to determine what befalls of her father and how it connects the mysterious death of her mother. Further complications arise with the arrival of Maya (Pevita Pearce), Alfie’s step-sister. The two women slowly journey into a horrifying downward spiral of violence and insanity as they edge into the truth of what or who Lesmana has been dwelling with.
May the Devil Take You tells the evil nature of the Devil that can be embedded in human beings. The devil is depicted as a representation of human evil that can perform acts of terror to kill other humans.
Hailing out of Indonesia, Tjahjanto co-directed the “Safe Haven” segment in our V/H/S/2 and also is behind Killers, Macabre and Headshot.
May the Devil take you too.
Shooting soon. 🎥 pic.twitter.com/sLsUrJF7m5
— Timo Tjahjanto (@Timobros) August 13, 2019
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.
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