Movies
Mckenna Grace Stars in Lifetime’s ‘The Bad Seed Returns’ This Memorial Day [Trailer]
The 2018 Lifetime remake of the classic 1956 Oscar-nominated thriller The Bad Seed is getting a sequel, with Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters Afterlife) reprising her villainous role.
Grace stars in The Bad Seed Returns, and the young star also co-wrote the script with her father, Ross Burge, and the 2018 film’s writer, Barbara Marshall (Wish Upon).
In The Bad Seed Returns…
“After the murderous events that left her father (Rob Lowe) dead, 15-year-old Emma (Mckenna Grace), a seemingly typical teenaged girl, is now living with aunt Angela (Michelle Morgan) and navigating high school. But the darkness can only be hidden for so long, especially when Angela’s husband Robert (Benjamin Ayres) begins to suspect Emma may not be as innocent as she appears, and a new girl at school seems to know Emma’s secrets from the past. Left with no choice, Emma slips back to her old ways to take care of her enemies by any means necessary. ”
Louise Archambault (Catastrophe, This Life) directed. Grace executive produces along with her father, mother, Crystal Burge, and Mark Wolper, who executive produced the 2018 movie.
The Bad Seed Returns premieres on Lifetime Monday, May 30, 2022.
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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