Movies
AFM ’11: First Images from ‘Dead Before Dawn’
Half zombie, half demon, Christopher Lloyd (Piranha 3D) is part of Dead Before Dawn, the Canadian indie 3D horror film from Wango Films, now in post out of in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The Emmy-award winning Lloyd will play the occult shop-running grandfather of Casper Galloway, played by Devon Bostick.
Dead Before Dawn, directed by April Mullen, “follows college kids that accidentally unleash an evil curse that causes people to kill themselves and turn into zombie demons, or zemons.”
The ensemble cast includes Martha MacIsaac, Brandon Jay McLaren, Brittany Allen, Kevin McDonald and Rossif Sutherland. The genre picture was written by Tim Doiron, who co-produces with Mullen.
With AFM kicking off tomorrow, we’ve now got the first ever images and sales art! Click the pic above for the full gallery. “CASPER GALLOWAY’S future is one giant question mark. With only two weeks until College graduation he still lives with his mother, is indecisive to a fault and is one credit away from failing. But just when Casper thinks things couldn’t get any worse, he and his friends accidentally unleash a curse that causes people to kill themselves and turn into Zombie Demons, aka Zemons.
Armed with a slew of homemade weapons and a Winnebago, the team races through the night, killing Zemons and fighting time, frantically searching for a way to reverse the curse. But as the Zemon army starts to overpower the team, Casper finds himself with no choice but to face his fears and become the unlikeliest of heroes. Will Casper be able to reverse the curse and save the world, or will he and all his friends be “Dead Before Dawn?”
Shaun of the Dead meets The Goonies in this coming-of-age adventure story that puts a whole new spin on the comedy horror genre.“
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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