Movies
LA Film Festival Premieres ‘The Last Exorcism’, Other Genre Fare
The LA Film Festival has announced its lineup for 2010, and while the venue has changed, they continue to choose quality over quantity when it comes to horror entries. Let The Right One In and Coffin Joe’s Embodiment Of Evil are just some of the films that B-D got to check out for the first time at the festival in years past, and this year is bound to carry on that tradition. The biggest draw is The Last Exorcism (formerly Cotton), which is produced by Eli Roth and directed by Daniel Stamm. The film will have its WORLD PREMIERE at the Gibson Ampitheatre, which is a great venue for a horror flick. The screening comes a full two months before its theatrical debut, so local fans should seize the opportunity to check it out early! Read on for details on Exorcism, as well as a few other horror highlights from this year’s festival.
NOTE – The LA Film Festival runs from June 17th-27th. Actual date and screening locations for each film are still pending, we will update when available. Passes for the festival are on sale May 10th, tickets for individual films will be on sale June 1st. Visit the OFFICIAL SITE for more info.
The Last Exorcism (DIRECTOR Daniel Stamm WRITERS Huck Botko, Andrew Gurland PRODUCERS Marc Abraham, Thomas A. Bliss, Eric Newman, Eli Roth CAST Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Jamie Alyson Caudle, Louis Herthum, Tony Bentley, Shanna Forrestall, Caleb Jones) – A minister-turned-non-believer experiences the most harrowing night of his life as he fights for the body and mind of a young girl on a remote farm where nothing is what it seems. World Premiere
Centurion – England (DIRECTOR/WRITER Neil Marshall PRODUCERS Christian Colson, Robert Jones CAST Michael Fassbender, Dominic West, Olga Kurylenko) – On the far fringes of the Roman Empire, a bloody guerilla war wages between the savage Pict clan and the legendary Ninth Legion in this hard-hitting, high-octane action epic.
All About Evil (DIRECTOR/WRITER Joshua Grannell PRODUCERS Darren Stein, Brian Benson, Debbie Brubaker CAST Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Dekker, Cassandra Peterson, Mink Stole, Noah Segan) – In this darkly comic tribute to schlock cinema in all its gory glory, a mousy librarian with stars in her eyes becomes a homicidal proprietress of a midnight movie palace.
Bitter Feast (DIRECTOR/WRITER Joe Maggio PRODUCERS Larry Fessenden, Peter Phok, Brent Kunkle CAST James LeGros, Joshua Leonard, Amy Seimetz, Larry Fessenden, Owen Campbell, Tobias Campbell, Megan Hilty, John Speredakos, Mario Batali) – After losing both his restaurant and his TV cooking show, a pompous chef kidnaps the food blogger he blames for all his problems and serves him a dish of revenge cooked to order–raw and bloody. World Premiere
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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