Movies
Danielle Harris Reveals ‘Stake Land’ Webisodes!
While visiting the set of Dark Sky Films’ Stake Land in the cold, upstate Catskill Mountains, leading lady Danielle Harris spilled the beans about a series of webisodes that were shot for each of the main characters in the film. You can read all about them beyond the break. Being helmed by Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street), the flick takes place following a global spread of vampirism.
Kelly McGillis plays a nun who joins a small team of survivors – including Danielle Harris – as they make a treacherous journey north to safety through the war-torn U.S.
With there being so little dialogue in Stake Land (watch for our full report soon), and virtually no back stories, some of the lead actors and actresses in the movie have directed their own shorts, which will be available for viewing before the film’s release.
“I just directed a webisode for Stake Land,” Danielle Harris told Bloody-Disgusting. “The webisodes are a nice little look inside our lives before we met. They’re short, maybe four to seven minutes each. It’s a great chance to sort of see all the directors’ styles, and how we differ from one another, which I don’t think is done very often, giving the fans the chance to sort of become emotionally invested in these characters before they watch them. A little snippet into their lives.”
Further conversation revealed that Danielle Harris would be singing in her back story.
“I come out in a beautiful, risqué, very short, cleavage gown… I’m just kidding. No, there’s no Sequin gowns in this movie! It’s just a nice way to sort of introduce who Belle is. We’re sort of having a little honkey tonk. We’re singing – Jim Mickle (director) and Adam Folk (producer) were out there with me – one playing the banjo, one playing the guitar. I got a chance to sing, and I have a horrible cold – I don’t have the greatest voice to begin with. I guess I can kind of carry a tune. But, um… I gave it my all. I’m the girl you usually have to bribe when I’m drunk – cause I don’t get up and do kareoke, no matter how much money you put on the table. I did it once, because Quentin Tarantino directed me up on stage and I just couldn’t resist, but other than that, I just don’t get up on stage. So – this was new for me. It will be interesting to see. I think it will be on the soundtrack, which I’m really nervous about.”
When asked if it was ever considered to go into a studio:
“Jim is really about leaving it real and keeping it real and not having it look like we’ve done it in the studio, pitch corrected. I don’t really care, to be honest,” said Danielle, shrugging it all off. “Whatever. I’m not a singer, I’m an actress. But it was fun to do. Again, I have this cold, and I couldn’t really hear myself, so it’s probably a little bit off key. Or a lot off key. But I got the crowd going, which is all that really mattered. And then I left, drove six hours, slept, got up and drove to the mountains and watched the sun rise for my short. I shot for twelve hours today. And now I’m going to bed…”
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!
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