Exclusives
New ‘Offspring’ Image, Behind-the-Scenes Video!
B-D stringer JM wrote in with an exclusive pic from Offspring, along with a little word from director Andrew Van Den Houten. As an added bonus, over at BDTV you’ll find the first of a series of webisodes of behind-the-scenes footage of the making of OFFSPRING. In the film survivors of a feral flesh-eating clan are chowing their way through the locals. Amy Halbard and Claire Carey strive to survive their abduction by the cannibals and save their children. A subplot involving Claire’s despicable husband, Steven, gives an opportunity to cleverly compare predatory civilized folk to the appetite-driven primitives.
Andrew van den Houten, Director of OFFSPRING, chats a bit with JM about the cave scenes and how he approached filming this adaptation. Click the image to see it much larger.
“Upon reading Jack Ketchum’s book OFFSPRING, although ultra-violent and dealing with cannibalism, I realized that the story is not as far fetched as most horror yarns.
Thematically and developmentally, the characters and world by which OFFSPRING takes place are very real.
While doing research for the film, I found it interesting that in some South American Amazonian rainforests there are still cannibalistic head-hunting tribes in exsistence. With deforestation and other disastrous ecological encroachments, the separation between the two worlds is continuing to decline. I enjoyed filming Ketchum’s story and screenplay, as I found it really allowed for a true exploration of a tribalistic people – desperate to survive and maintain their rituals – all while having to deal with the modern world at its front door step.
The violence in the film is scary to me because it comes from a very basic animalistic need for survival. I guided myself after calling action everytime, to commit to the belief that there was no other moment – no last chance – to save this this fading species, this clan, in each filmed frame. After motivating the action in the cave scenes I found myself pushing the actors to experience the pain, take after take, in order to get the intensity relayed to the screen as believable as possible. We made every effort to maintain the intensity, as we did with Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door – never giving the viewer a moment to regather themselves, until the film itself is immersed in the depths of true horror.“
Exclusives
Katharine Isabelle Battles Cosmic Horror in Exclusive ‘Junction Row’ Teaser Trailer [Fantasia 2026]
Among Fantasia 2026‘s massive final wave of programming this morning is Raven Banner’s Lovecraftian creature feature Junction Row, starring Canadian horror icon Katharine Isabelle, and we’re exclusively unveiling the teaser trailer.
Junction Row will celebrate its World Premiere at Fantasia on July 28.
Watch a housing compound fall under siege from Lovecraftian creatures more dangerous than drug dealers in the trailer below.
Junction Row follows “Juno, a recovering addict who leaves a fringe housing compound for a better life, leaving her beloved Ruby behind. When she learns that Ruby has gone missing, Juno returns, only to find Junction Row has become a hotbed of criminal activity, but she encounters much more than menacing drug dealers on her mission to find Ruby.”
Isabelle stars as Juno, with Natalie Brown (FX’s The Strain) as Ruby.
The creature feature marks the feature debut by director Ashlea Wessel, who has directed festival-favorite shorts like 2018’s “Tick” and 2020’s “Weirdo”.
Wessel co-writes Junction Row with Clown in a Cornfield author Adam Cesare and Matt Serafini.
Katharine Isabelle is coming off a brief appearance in Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, and more recently appeared in holiday horror It’s a Wonderful Knife. The horror icon is arguably best known for her turn as the eponymous werewolf in Ginger Snaps and for her roles in American Mary and Freddy vs Jason.
Fantasia teases that Junction Row tells “a story where the fear of the unknown isn’t confined to what lies above, but what waits beneath.”
Stay tuned for more from Fantasia as the festival gets underway later this month.