Movies
[News Bites] Let Me Leave The House Edition! Guillermo Del Toro Checks Into ‘Bloody Benders,’ ‘Absentia Director Tapped For ‘Oculus’ & Asylum Gets Sued!
Guillermo del Toro keeps collecting paycheck after paycheck slapping his name on yet another project. Deadline reports that del Toro’s Necropia Entertainment and Angryfilms’ Susan Montford and Don Murphy are teaming to option The Bloody Benders, a spec script by Adam Robitel. The scribe, a protege of Bryan Singer, based his script on the true story of the Benders, a husband, wife, son and daughter who ran a hotel in Kansas on the outskirts of the prairie in 1873. It might have been a precursor for the Bates Motel: As many as 20 guests checked in, and never checked out. The guests were robbed and murdered by their hosts, and the killers were never punished. Del Toro will not direct. “It is a beautiful and brutal yet poetic story, based on a very famous case, del Toro explained to the site. “If you consider America back then, it was a great transition to modernity, but on the prairie, these were huge landscapes where people traveled and days and weeks on end would pass without communication. So nothing happens, then there is this brutal murder, and then it’s back to pastoral peace and quiet. That rhythm was very attractive to me.” Murphy called the script “the perfect mixture of genres — Western, horror, thriller and love story,” while del Toro added, “It feels like ‘Prometheus’ is a very similar proposition to our film.”
Dominic Monaghan (“Lost”) has been cast as the narrator of Crackle‘s original horror-thriller anthology series “The Unknown,” which launches later this year on the Sony TV-owned multiplatform network, says the same site. Monaghan will play a blogger who chronicles the unexplained phenomenon that occurs in each of the six half-hour episodes. Frances Fisher, William Atherton, Taryn Manning, Jay Ferguson, and Christina Pickles have signed on for the stand-alone episodes so far.
Mike Flanagan (Absentia) has come on board to direct Intrepid Pictures’ horror project Oculus from a script he co-wrote with Jeff Howard, says Variety. Production is set for a late summer start. “Story centers on a murder that left two children orphans with authorities charging the brother while his sister believed that the true culprit was a haunted antique mirror. Now completely rehabilitated and in his twenties, the brother is ready to move on but his sister is determined to prove that the haunted mirror was responsible for destroying their family.”
Lastly, if you click over to Deadline you can read all about a lawsuit that pits Universal Pictures against Asylum for their forthcoming American Battleship that ruffs Uni’s Battleship. The suit claims against the “straight-to-DVD knock-off that features substantially similar artwork, packaging, release dates, and film trailers as Universal’s motion picture.” While we’re all protected in “spoofing”/making fun of a project, I’m not quite sure you can make your own version of a movie that’s deadpan serious. I guess the courts will battle this one out – and you can pretty much bet that if Asylum loses, there will be plenty more lawsuits from other majors.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.