Movies
The Corridor (limited/VOD)
“If ‘The Corridor’ had faith in its base concepts, it could have been riveting from beginning to end. Instead, it hides its true intentions until after the halfway point, and then expects its audience to snap awake once it starts getting good.”
While director Evan Kelly’s Canadian indie flick is being touted as a “sci-fi thriller”, over-eager viewers should note that the sci-fi elements take a good hour to reach maximum charge. A handful of old friends reunite at a snowbound cabin in the woods after a years-old tragedy, and with all the angsty talk of receding hairlines and male sterility, the first half of The Corridor detours through Men of a Certain Age country while on route to Dreamcatcher territory. Sure, some creepy sci-fi shit eventually happens, but those looking to be “thrilled” are going to have to bring along a spare backpack full of patience.
A brief prologue explains that teenage Terry had a mental breakdown after his mother’s apparent drug overdose. When his high school buddies attempted to offer assistance, Terry went at them with a butcher knife in full-on berserker mode. After being institutionalized for years, Terry is finally released, but as he joins his grown-up friends at the cabin in search of forgiveness, he wonders if the emotional scars will ever truly heal.
Twitchy and medicated, he’s initially pleased when his friends welcome him with open arms. But later, while wandering alone in the woods by the cabin, Terry discovers an enormous translucent “corridor“, and he wonders if this hallucination signals another mental breakdown. After 45 minutes of whiney male jibber-jabber, Terry‘s discovery of the mysterious corridor threatens to defibrillate the movie to life, but not before the filmmakers can roll out a few more generic scenes focused on the male mid-life crisis.
Ultimately all of the friends realize that they can also see the translucent box––Terry’s not batshit after all. Once they step inside, The Corridor starts busting out some super cool shit like mind-reading and alien possession, but it takes an eternity to get there. Frankly, I don’t get it. If you intend to build a thought-provoking sci-fi thriller based on ideas instead of action, why wait until after the halfway point to break out the good stuff? Ideas don’t cost anything…
If the dimestore CGI is any indication, the budget may have been a reason for the baggy beginning. There’s too much emphasis on depicting the translucent corridor with cheap-looking imagery, and not enough time spent exploring the creative ideas introduced by Josh McDonald’s script. If The Corridor had faith in its base concepts, it could have been riveting from beginning to end. Instead, it hides its true intentions until after the halfway point, and then expects its audience to snap awake once it starts getting good.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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