Movies
Official Poster For ‘Freakdog’
Inside you’ll find the first teaser poster for Paddy Breathnach’s (Shrooms) latest horror venture, Freakdog, which will premiere at the Frightfest UK this month. A young doctor in a US hospital administers a powerful and untested cocktail of drugs to a coma victim. But instead of curing him, it triggers a powerful “out-of-body” experience and enables the patient – a depraved and dangerous loner – to inhabit other people’s bodies and, through them, take revenge on the bullying medical students who were accidentally responsible for his condition. The doctor, who was herself a part of this group, is also targeted and as her colleagues are singled out and relentlessly picked off, she realises that she can trust no-one – friend or stranger – as this comatose killer moves in and out of bodies at will, getting ever closer as his murderous supernatural powers increase.
In a recent interview, filmmaker Christopher Nolan explained that he’s always been interested in directing a bona fide horror movie, with the award-winning director going so far as to praise genre creators for their continued risk-taking on the big screen.
If you’ve seen Nolan’s recently released The Odyssey, you’re likely aware that a scary movie helmed by the legendary director could be a very good idea.
After all, Nolan insisted on making use of old-fashioned movie magic and in-camera practical effects when shooting his adaptation of Homer’s epic. This retro approach made Odysseus’ encounters with mythological beings such as the giant cyclops that much more terrifying. By now, fans are undoubtedly aware that the massive creature was partially brought to life by an enormous puppet enhanced with near-invisible CGI, but there were also plenty of forced perspective shots where actor Bill Irwin actually chomped on disturbingly realistic replicas of Ithican soldiers.
As you can see in the below behind-the-scenes test footage shared by the Los Angeles-based Hamer FX, Irwin was given an assortment of latex dolls filled with fake blood and breakable skeletons that he could tear apart on camera. The darkness of Polyphemus’ cave covers up most of the gore in the finished film, but the moment remains a terrifying highlight in a movie that has a lot to say about the horrors of war.
Nolan actually requested these tiny edible soldiers for the flick because his vision for the iconic cyclops encounter was partially inspired by Francisco Goya’s disturbing mural of Saturn Devouring His Son. This mysterious piece is actually one of the artist’s infamous “Black Paintings,” which were found painted directly onto the walls of his old house near Madrid before a French baron ordered that the collection be transferred to canvas and assigned names for public viewing.
Details like these are what make me think that Nolan could pull off a genuinely scary horror picture if he came across the right idea. That being said, between the Fear Gas sequences in Batman Begins and Circe using body horror magic to transform men into pigs in The Odyssey, one might argue that he’s been preparing for such a task throughout his entire career.
The Odyssey is currently playing in theaters everywhere, though it’s definitely worth seeking out an IMAX screening if you can find one near you.
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