Movies
‘Dementia Part II’: Dark Star & Bloody Disgusting Team to Deliver Gross-Out Mayhem, Acquiring Crazy Midnighter!
Surprise!
We are excited to reveal that Dark Star Pictures and Bloody Disgusting have teamed to bring you the festival midnighter Dementia Part II as part of our brand new collaboration that will also cook up a spring release for the festival hit Honeydew. The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news out of the Welcome to Dark Star Virtual Film Festival on Saturday night.
Taken from the pages of Sam Raimi, and delivering absurd gross-out humor and nonstop mayhem, the making of Dementia Part II came out of a dare from Chicago’s Cinepocalype Film Festival and the movie’s producers JD Lifshitz and Raphael Margules. The two must produce a feature-length midnight movie from concept to finished product in one month so that it could make its World Premiere on the last night of the film festival! The film turned out to be Dementia Part II, a tongue-in-cheek sequel to Mike Testin’s 2015 original film.
In Dementia Part II, “Suzanne wasn’t always this confused. She wasn’t always dead either – when an ex-con takes a job as a handyman for an unstable elderly woman to avoid a parole violation, it becomes a choice he may regret.”
The film stars genre favorites Matt Mercer (Contracted, Bliss, Beyond the Gates), Graham Skipper (Almost Human, Sequence Break, VFW) and Najarra Townsend (Contracted, The Stylist), with Suzanne Voss (The Lords of Salem).
It was produced from conception to its world premiere screening by the writer/director team Matt Mercer and Mike Testin (The Salesman, Dementia) in just 30 days!
Dark Star and Bloody Disgusting plan a theatrical release for Dementia Part II in late spring with the VOD/Digital and DVD release to follow in early summer.
“From the first conversation we had with Mike Repsch and the Dark Star team, we were excited to work with them,” said co-directors Matt Mercer and Mike Testin. “It felt like they were the right company to shepherd the gleefully slimy midnight antics of Dementia Part II to audiences. We had fun making the movie, and in such an unconventional way, and are excited to work with such a cool and progressive distributor to unleash it on eyeballs.”
“Dementia Part II is an immensely unique gross-out journey of a horror film and perfect addition to our Dark Star//Bloody Disgusting collaboration,” said Dark Star Pictures’ Michael Repsch. “From the inception of the project and how it was made to the putrid practical effects used, this is one that audiences should embrace for and enjoy the ride.”
Recently, Dark Star Pictures and Bloody Disgusting partnered on its first acquisition on the acclaimed backwoods horror film Honeydew starring Sawyer Spielberg in his feature acting debut. It was written and directed by Devereux Milburn, with the film also marking his directorial debut. Dark Star and Bloody Disgusting plan to release the film in theaters March 2021, with a VOD/Digital release and DVD to follow in April.
So glad we caught @BDisgusting/@DarkStarPics‘ secret screening of DEMENTIA PART II! This movie had a gag so gross I almost threw up in my hands 🤮 pic.twitter.com/cHRX7Otbgx
— Jon DeHaan (@JonOnAString) January 24, 2021
Just watched the secret screening from the @DarkStarPics/@BDisgusting virtual fest, DEMENTIA PART II and it fits the labels perfectly. It’s weird, it’s interesting and it is beyond DISGUSTING. Had a blast with this nasty horror comedy.
Keep an eye out for it all! pic.twitter.com/0uHh1CGzKk
— Killer Horror Critic (@KillerfromSpace) January 24, 2021
Happy to see DEMENTIA PART II has been picked up by @DarkStarPics and @BDisgusting! Saw it a while back at Screamfest and it was a blast, with @mercershark just killing it. And it’s only like 65 minutes long, which is #bliss
— Brian Collins (@BrianWCollins) January 24, 2021
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.