Movies
2009 HORROR MOVIE PREVIEW: VARIOUS STUDIOS
Leading up until the New Year we’ve got our annual round-up of the best and worst films, along with preview pieces for all films coming in 2009. Beyond the break you can check out our final preview piece, which features all the leftover horror films being released by various studios. The most shocking of all is that 20th Century Fox appears to have one horror movies slated for 2009 as pretty much all of their 2008 releases were duds (Mirrors, Shutter, The Happening). What films are you looking forward to the most in 2009?
–VARIOUS 2009 HORROR MOVIE PREVIEW–
20TH CENTURY FOX / UNIVERSAL / DIMENSION (MGM) / VARIOUS
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR SYNOPSES, TRAILERS, DETAILS & MORE STILLS (If Available)
Dates Subject to Change
–20TH CENTURY FOX–
The story of a cheerleader who is possessed by a demon and starts feeding off the boys in a Minnesota farming town. Her “plain Jane” best friend must kill her, then escape from a correctional facility to go after the Satan-worshiping rock band responsible for the transformation.
–SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT–
The story of a man who unearths a time capsule with children’s drawings predicting the future that was buried in the 1950s. One child’s drawings predicted several horrible events that already have come true; however, one of those events has not yet occurred, and the man sets out to prevent it from happening.
When five sorority girls inadvertently cause the murder of one of their sisters in a prank gone wrong, they agree to keep the matter to themselves and never speak of it again, so they can get on with their lives. This proves easier said than done, when after graduation a mysterious killer goes after the five of them and anyone who knows their secret…
–DARK SKY FILMS–
The film tells the tale of a dysfunctional family’s vacation to the Irish countryside that encounters a village of diseased, deformed and decidedly homicidal residents.
In the 1980s, college student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse. She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret they plan to use her in a satanic ritual.
–OVERTURE FILMS–
Two crewmen awaken from hyper-sleep aboard a spacecraft. None of their equipment is working, and their memories are incomplete. What was their mission? How much time has passed? Where are they? Who are they? As they try to piece things together, they discover they are not alone, and the ship’s new inhabitants – tribal warriors carrying crudely made weapons – are moving among them, intent on killing all aboard. As the space travelers unravel the frightening and deadly secrets the ship harbors, they realize the survival of mankind hinges on their actions. They must regain control of the ship before PANDORUM takes over.
The story revolves around the inhabitants of a small Kansas town who are beset by death and insanity after a plane crash lets loose a secret biological weapon into the water supply.
A young construction worker whose family is having hard times overhears a conversation through a hole is a rooftop and undergoes an impulsive journey that he hopes will lead to a fortune. However, to his horror, he finds himself in a high-stakes contest-to-the-death, with little hope of victory or escape…
–MAGNOLIA / MAGNET RELEASING–
Centers on the freak death of a partygoer on a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean and the conflict that arises among the surviving passengers.
A man regains consciousness deep down at the bottom of a cave. He has no idea of how he got there, nor can he determine what happened to the dead man whose body he wakes up next to. Only one thing is certain–he has to escape the menacing creature that’s pursuing him, climbing back to the surface through a cemetery like world that’s been abandoned by a mysterious organization called Eden Log.
The film is about an FBI agent tracking a serial killer with the help of his would-be-victims, all of whom have very different stories of their experiences.
–AFTER DARK FILMS (January 9-15)–
“Inspired by the legends of a 19th-century cannibal and an extinct tiger, this brutal horror-thriller centers on four friends who find out that something–or someone–murderous lurks in the rain-slogged Australian bush.”
“A young woman tries to find her injured boyfriend in a bizarre and dangerous hospital.”
“The Broken” is a psychological horror project, starring Lena Headey as a woman whose life descends into nightmare after she sees an apparent double of herself driving by in her own car.”
“The film follows a young woman trying to escape an abusive past by moving to Atlanta, but discovers more cruelty awaits her.”
“Robert Perkins builds an army of 14 people brainwashed through cult-like methods to protect him from his parents’ killers. When Perkins is imprisoned, the police unwittingly unleash his followers on a small town and they’ve only got one thing on their mind: “Kill for Mr. Perkins.”
“A young man discovers he has inherited the powers of “The Butterfly Effect” and attempts to solve the mystery of his high school girlfriend’s death using his newfound ability, only to unwittingly unleash a vicious serial killer.”
Set in a small, God-fearing town, story focuses on a young girl caught between her Christian upbringing and a desire to experience the outside world. Her desire to break free is amplified when residents begin to die suspiciously.
After witnessing a family member thrown of a balcony by her fiancée on her wedding day and the violent stabbing of her aunt, a young woman comes to realize she may be next in line. She desperately tries to find out why those around her turn on her and why she seems marked for death. Who can she trust – where can she turn for help when it seems everyone is out to get her. If only she can survive the murderous rage of friends and even her own family long enough to uncover the secret.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
You must be logged in to post a comment.