The latest entry hails from Jenn Wexler, the director of The Ranger and The Sacrifice Game, who co-writes the script with Matt Angel from a story by Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Wrath of Becky). Temptation opens on a now-adult Becky on her latest mission with the CIA. The caper is a complete failure, ending unsurprisingly in extremely bloody fashion.

In a post-mission debrief, CIA director Baker (Fiona Marr) explains to the young agent that she’s too much of a loose cannon, but as flashbacks to her psych evaluations and select events from the first film confirm, Becky has never truly recovered from the murder of her father by white supremacists.

It makes sense, then, that this outing brings Nazis back to the forefront as a kind of full circle moment. Becky’s new adversary is General Wilhelm Reuss (Neil Patrick Harris), a devout member of the Reich who believes so strongly in the cause that he recently moved his family, along with enforcer Russell and Dr Friedrich Metzger (James Urbaniak), to the Wolf’s Lair in Poland.

Turns out that despite the passage of several in-universe years between films, Becky still hasn’t learned how to play well with others or follow the rules, despite the guiding touch of handler Montana (Kate Siegel, Hush) and the model set by fellow agent Rigby (Brandon Flynn, Hellraiser). When Becky is given one final opportunity to prove her worth to the CIA, it sets up a collision course between her and Reuss that is guaranteed to be an all-out bloodbath.

The series continues to get good mileage casting against-type for its villains, although it should be noted that NPH doesn’t get as much to do as either the first film’s Kevin James or the sequel’s Sean William Scott. That’s because, in part, Reuss’s family comes as an evil package. Introduced in a great comedic scene when Becky checks in – all smiles – to the family’s Nazi motel, mother Helga (Catherine Walker), daughter Luisa (Aiofe Hughes), and son Otto (Noah Leggott) are as much of a threat as the patriarch.

Of course, the main selling feature of the film is Becky, and Wilson continues to have a blast bringing the prickly, quippy, and trigger-happy character to life. Wilson remains an absolute delight, from her delicious voiceover (“Mission ‘find out what these fuckers are up to’: commence”) to her dinner table banter with the Reuss family (“Where do you heil from?” she asks them). Three films in, there’s no fear that Becky could actually die, but the film isn’t afraid to put its characters through the wringer – Becky sports a broken nose for most of the film’s last act – and there are, naturally, some extremely cathartic Nazi casualties.

While there’s a disappointing lack of rocket launchers in this entry, by employing the tropes of the spy movie, The Last Temptation of Becky does get to have its James Bond/Q moment when Montana walks her pint-sized agent through a litany of Chekhov’s items that are inevitably used to destroy Nazis later. Ditto Becky’s newfound interest in fencing with Rigby, which serves her well when she goes up against Luisa in a duel. This sequence also includes the best exchange of the film, when Becky enquires where the girl went to Hitler Youth Camp and Luisa replies: “Mississippi.”

The Nazis are rightfully portrayed as a legitimate threat and, simultaneously, the subject of complete mockery. The brownies – armed guards who do the dirty work of patrolling the woods and escorting prisoners – are comprised of men who explain they’re just following orders or they are “media and Performing Arts majors from Ohio State.” They’re idiots who are the brunt of multiple jokes and insults throughout the film, including Becky’s immediately iconic jacket emblazoned with “Fuck Nazis” on the back.

Then there’s the hilarious reveal of Reuss and Dr. Metzger’s master plan, which is simultaneously pathetic and hilariously short-lived…because even The Last Temptation of Becky understands that the only logical response to Nazis making a literal comeback in 2026 is to barf on them, punch them in the face, or blow them up. Preferably all of the above.

If there’s a misstep, it’s the film’s uneasy mix of practical FX and CGI. An early death involving a drone and a landmine would be much more compelling if the accompanying explosion and fire were real, and a decapitation winds up looking cheap because of the digital blood. Compare this to another death later when someone bleeds from every facial orifice: it’s clearly practical and, as a result, looks great.

There are a few other instances of violence that miss the mark. A potentially brutal knife in the mouth is partially obscured; some of the hand-to-hand combat in the last act doesn’t hit terribly hard. But overall, it’s impossible not to cheer on Becky as she fucks Nazis up at every opportunity.

If that’s what your heart desires, then The Last Temptation of Becky will be right up your alley. Here’s hoping that, despite the possible implications teased by the title, Lulu Wilson decides to return to the role every three years (or less!) for a new Becky film.

The Last Temptation of Becky made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.

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The sequel to 2020’s Becky and 2023’s The Wrath of Becky will premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal this summer before hitting theaters via Quiver Distribution.

In the film, “Becky (Wilson), now working as a field agent for the CIA, is sent undercover to Poland to infiltrate a family of innkeepers who are running a tourist venture at The Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s WWII bunker. After learning that the father, Wilhelm Reuss (Harris), is on a mission to bring about the Fourth Reich, Becky takes matters into her own hands.”

Jenn Wexler (The Sacrifice Game, The Ranger) directs from a script she co-wrote with Matt Angel (The Wrath of Becky), from a story by Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Wrath of Becky).

Brandon Flynn (“13 Reasons Why”), James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer), and Kate Siegel (“The Haunting of Hill House”) round out the cast.

From Post Film and BoulderLight Pictures, producers include Russ Posternak & Chadd Harbold of Post Film, Larry Greenberg of Quiver Distribution, Paul Kennedy & Aideen Hand of Village Films, Jordan Yale Levine, and Jordan Beckerman.

Quiver’s Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman are executive producers, along with Wilson, Harris, Louis Winters, Nick Morris, Joe & Mike Huguenot, Kevin & Brian Debold, Nicholas Emanuel, Aaron Dalla Villa, and Carl Moellenberg.

In its The Last Temptation of Becky write-up, Fantasia previews, “Wexler shines here, highlighting the underdog heroine and going for broke with tons of gore and crazy kills. Meanwhile, Wilson reprises her beloved character with gusto, unleashing Becky’s signature rage on an army of insane baddies!”

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Like the Scream Factory release, Arrow’s will include the black & white “Shush Cut.”

Here’s the full Special Features lineup…

2-DISC 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Adam Rabalais
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anton Bitel, Kat Ellinger, Amanda Reyes and Eloise Ross

DISC 1 – ORIGINAL VERSION

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in HDR10 of the original, full-colour version
• English Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio options
• Shush Cut audio mix in DTS-HD MA 5.1
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with co-writer/director Mike Flanagan, co-writer/actor Kate Siegel, and actors Samantha Sloyan, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Trucco
• Picture-in-picture commentary with Flanagan, Siegel, Sloyan, Gallagher Jr., and Trucco
• The Dance Macabre, an interview with Mike Flanagan
• To Stand Alone, an interview with Kate Siegel
• The Constant Reader, an interview with Samantha Sloyan
• The Shape of Silence, an interview with John Gallagher Jr.
• Silent Witness, an interview with Michael Trucco
• One Good Scare, an interview with actor Trevor Macy
• Violent Strains, an interview with composers The Newton Brothers
• One Terrible Night, an interview with cinematographer James Kniest
• Original trailer
• Image gallery

DISC 2 – SHUSH CUT

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in HDR10 of the Shush Cut, presented in black & white with a revised audio mix
• English Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio options
• Original version audio mix in DTS-HD MA 5.1
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel
• Mike Flanagan Artist Talk, a feature-length Q&A with the filmmaker, recorded at Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal in 2024
• Beyond Fest Q&A with Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, recorded at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles in 2024
• The Silent Mask, a brand new visual essay by author and critic Alexandra HellerNicholas on the film’s representation of deafness

Arrow Video previews, “Before The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep, writer-director Mike Flanagan delivered Hush – a lean, nerve-shredding exercise in minimalist terror. Co-written with and starring Kate Siegel, this stripped-back home invasion thriller showcases the filmmaker’s mastery of sustained suspense.

“Maddie (Siegel), a deaf novelist living in secluded woodland isolation, finds her hard-won peace shattered when a masked killer (John Gallagher Jr.) appears at her window. Cut off from help, she is forced into a brutal game of cat and mouse where silence becomes both her greatest vulnerability and her only weapon.

“As the night deepens, Maddie’s survival will depend on ingenuity, resilience, and sheer strength of will.”

Arrow Video’s Hush Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD is set for release on July 12, 2026, and it’s up for pre-order now. This is a UK disc, but thankfully 4K discs are inherently Region Free.

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Deadline reports today that Flanagan regulars Rahul Kohli, Hamish Linklater, Gil Bellows, Carl Lumbly, Robert Longstreet, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Benjamin Pajak, and Carla Gugino have all joined the cast of The Exorcist.

They join previously announced cast members Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers), Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet), Diane Lane (Unfaithful), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), and Sasha Calle (The Flash), along with John Leguizamo (Land of the Dead, John Wick).

Scarlett Johansson will star as a mother with Jacobi Jupe playing her son.

Plot details remain under wraps, but the film will tell an all-new story set in The Exorcist universe. It is neither a remake of William Friedkin’s 1974 horror classic nor a sequel to 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer. “This is an opportunity to do something that I believe has never been done within the franchise — something that honors what came before it but isn’t built on nostalgia,“ Flanagan said of the project. “I really just saw an opportunity to make the scariest movie I’ve ever made. I know expectations are high. No one’s more intimidated than I am.”

Universal will release Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist in theaters March 12, 2027.

Flanagan is producing via his Red Room Pictures alongside Jason Blum for Blumhouse-Atomic Monster and David Robinson for Morgan Creek Entertainment. Executive producers include Red Room’s Alexandra Magistro and Blumhouse’s Ryan Turek.

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Lulu Wilson returns to her titular role, joined by Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”), Brandon Flynn (“13 Reasons Why”), James Urbaniak (Oppenheimer), and Kate Siegel (“The Haunting of Hill House”), whose role as Agent Kate Montana was teased in the previous installment.

Production has wrapped in Northern Ireland on the gory action thriller threequel, which is slated for a theatrical release this summer from Quiver Distribution.

Now working as a field agent for the CIA, Becky (Wilson) is sent undercover to Poland to infiltrate a family of innkeepers who are running a tourist venture at The Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s WWII bunker. After learning that the father, Wilhelm Reuss (Harris), is on a mission to bring about the Fourth Reich, Becky takes matters into her own hands.

Jenn Wexler (The Sacrifice Game, The Ranger) directs from a script by Matt Angel (The Wrath of Becky).

“After the incredible audience response to the first two Becky films, we are thrilled to have Lulu Wilson step back into this character that was made just for her,” said Quiver co-presidents Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman. “Having Neil Patrick Harris facing off against Lulu Wilson will take this series to a whole new level, and we can’t wait for audiences to see what Becky has in store for anyone who dares get in her way.”

“As a huge fan of the first two films, I am so incredibly excited to be a part of the Becky universe and to help carry its legacy forward,” added Wexler. “Long live Becky!”

From Post Film and BoulderLight Pictures, producers include Russ Posternak and Chadd Harbold of Post Film, Larry Greenberg of Quiver Distribution, Paul Kennedy and Aideen Hand of Village Films, Jordan Yale Levine, and Jordan Beckerman.

Quiver’s Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman are executive producers, along with Wilson, Harris, Louis Winters Nick Morris, Joe & Mike Huguenot, Kevin & Brian Debold, Nicholas Emanuel, Aaron Dalla Villa, and Carl Moellenberg.

Posternak commented, “With The Last Temptation of Becky, we’re delivering the biggest, bloodiest and most unhinged installment of the franchise yet, taking everything Becky fans love and turning it up to eleven.”

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The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors is coming down the chimney December 16 on Shudder. Watch the trailer below.

The film features four original shorts from genre powerhouses Swanthula & Dracmorda Boulet, Late Night with the Devil star David Dastmalchian, Malginant and M3GAN writer Akela Cooper, and “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” actress Kate Siegel.

“Gaudete” is written and directed by the Boulets and stars Bonnie Aarons, Aaron Abrams, Briana Venskus, and Eloisa Huggins.

After inheriting their grandmother’s old house, a family attempts to settle in on Christmas Eve. But as strange sounds echo through the halls and tensions rise, an unseen presence forces them to face a chilling secret buried within the home.

“Yeti or Not” is directed by Dastmalchian from a script he co-wrote with Leah Kilpatrick and Jennifer Polania. Dastmalchian plays the Yeti with Lauren LaVera, Jennifer Polania, and Leah Kilpatrick.

Three close friends embark on a wilderness search to find their missing sister and friend. What they discover in the snow covered wild is something more terrifying and inhuman than they could have ever imagined.

“Old Acquaintance” is written and directed by Cooper and stars Tracie Thoms, Tiffany Smith, Charles Murray, and Abhora.

It’s New Years Eve and a woman returns home after her father’s sudden death only to find the demon that was haunting him is now after her.

“Down the Chimney” is written and directed by Siegel and features the voices of Dominic Hure, Theodora Flanagan, and Cody Flanagan.

The worst case scenario for good little boys and girls comes true…

“This project has been such a joy to build alongside our dear friend David and the remarkable team of filmmakers involved,” said the Boulets. “The anthology showcases four distinct visions of holiday horror, and creating our own short within it gave us the chance to finally reveal the kind of scripted genre storytelling that’s closest to our hearts—moody, vicious, and hauntingly beautiful. We’re thrilled for audiences to experience the entire collection, and especially the dark little nightmare we’ve contributed to it.”

“There is something inherently haunting and haunted about the holiday season. Dickens knew it,” added Dastmalchian. “And now I get to team up with my favorite fiends, The Boulet Brothers, and a host of talented creative creatures as we twist and terrorize the holiday season into something fun and fearsome. Move aside, It’s a Wonderful Life, there’s a new holiday tradition coming to town!”

Holiday of Horrors is a Boulet Brothers Production in association with Good Fiend Films, with the Boulets and Dastmalchian executive producing.

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The Shudder Original Special The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors will debut on December 16, 2025.

From Emmy-nominated television stars, producers, and directors The Boulet Brothers and David Dastmalchian (The Suicide Squad, Late Night with the Devil) comes a chilling holiday-themed horror special produced by Boulet Brothers’ Productions and Good Fiend Productions.

The holiday original features four original shorts, each written and directed by a different genre powerhouse: The Boulet Brothers, Dastmalchian, Akela Cooper (Malignant, M3GAN), and Kate Siegel (V/H/S/Beyond, The Haunting of Hill House). Dastlmachian’s short, “Yeti or Not,” was co-written with Leah Kilpatrick and Jennifer Polania.

The Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors anthology is said to blend “atmospheric horror, practical gore, and haunting holiday imagery into a new seasonal classic.”

The Boulet Brothers – Dracmorda and Swanthula – previously celebrated the holidays with a Halfway-to-Halloween special but are also huge fans of yuletide terror. The horror hosts previously shared their favorite holiday horror movies with Bloody Disgusting. 

Check out fresh images from the new Holiday of Horrors special and look for it exclusively on Shudder next month.

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It’s important to note that The Life of Chuck isn’t a horror movie from Flanagan and King this time around, but that doesn’t mean the movie isn’t packed with beloved horror stars.

In this exclusive clip, Mike Flanagan and star Kate Siegel discuss the horror icons featured in the cast of The Life of Chuck, including A Nightmare on Elm Street legend Heather Langenkamp, Scream‘s Matthew Lillard, and Late Night with the Devil‘s David Dastmalchian. And that’s just the beginning. Watch the exclusive featurette below.

“The similarities between The Life of Chuck and a horror movie is that the emotional stakes are so epic in this film,” Matthew Lillard previews in the new featurette video.

Written and directed by Flanagan, the film celebrates the life of Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz as he experiences the wonder of love, heartbreak of loss, and the multitudes contained in all of us.

Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, and Benjamin Pajak each play the titular character at different points in his life. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Annalise Basso, Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Carl Lumbly, Samantha Sloyan, Harvey Guillen, Kate Siegel, and Mark Hamill co-star alongside Heather Langenkamp, Rahul Kohli, David Dastmalchian, Violet McGraw, Hamish Linklater, and Nick Offerman as the narrator.

The Life of Chuck marks Flanagan’s third King adaptation, following Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. He’s in pre-production on a “Carrie” series and developing a Dark Tower series.

The post ‘The Life of Chuck’ – Mike Flanagan & Kate Siegel Spotlight the Horror Stars in Stephen King Movie [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Flanagan will reunite with frequent collaborators Kate Siegel, Michael Trucco, Katee Sackhoff, Rahul Kohli, Crystal Balint, and Danielle Klaudt on the project.

New additions to his circle include Heather Graham (Boogie Nights), Tim Bagley (“Grace and Frankie”), Tahmoh Penikett (“Battlestar Galactica”), Mapuana Makia (“Doogie Kamealoha M.D.”), Naika Toussaint (“Van Helsing”), Delainey Hayles (“Interview with the Vampire”), Cassandra Naud (Influencer), and newcomer Rowan Danielle.

Summer H. Howell stars as Carrie White alongside previously announced cast members Samantha Sloyan, Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton, Thalia Dudek, Josie Totah, Arthur Conti, Joel Oulette, Matthew Lillard, and Amber Midthunder.

Described as “a bold and timely reimagining” of King’s classic story, the eight-episode series is produced by Amazon MGM Studios.

Misfit high-schooler Carrie White has spent her life in seclusion with her domineering mother. After her father’s sudden and untimely death, Carrie finds herself contending with the alien landscape of public high school, a bullying scandal that shatters her community, and the emergence of mysterious telekinetic powers.

Flanagan serves as writer and showrunner in addition to directing select episodes. This marks his fourth King adaptation, following Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck.

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For some, it was Michael J. Fox holding a copy of Skeleton Crew for his 1988 READ campaign poster that first inspired a read of the Stephen King short story collection. For others, the killer, record-breaking trailer for Neon’s new film The Monkey, written and directed by Osgood Perkins, instigated fingers to flip through pages. Whatever the inciting incident that introduced one to Skeleton Crew, the fact remains that it is a certified Constant Reader classic and a treasure trove of cinematic, eerie, and unsettling tales.

Since the initial release of Skeleton Crew in 1985, several stories have found their way to the screen, with varying degrees of success. Now, with the hype running hot, the latest Skeleton Crew adaptation promises to breathe new life into one of King’s most chilling short stories. As we await the release of Perkins’ latest this Friday, let’s take a look back at the other adaptations from Skeleton Crew—the hits, the misses, and the hidden gems stuffed away in the back closet that have brought King’s words to the big and small screen.

“The Mist”

For good reason, “The Mist” is perhaps the best-known story in the entire Skeleton Crew collection. Haunting, evocative, and downright scary, “The Mist” perfectly encapsulates everything Stephen King does best. It is, therefore, not surprising that this novella has spawned multiple adaptations—including one of the best to ever do it.

But long before Thomas Jane stole hearts only to break them in Frank Darabont’s silver screen adaptation, it was the monitor screens of 1985 computers that “The Mist” first set out to conquer. Developed by Angelsoft, Inc., The Mist DOS game was an interactive narrative fiction adventure game released on a good old floppy disk. Officially licensed by Sai King, the game failed to live up to the source material in both execution and story. However, it stands as one of the early examples of King’s continued willingness to explore new and uncharted territory with his stories and how they are released.

To this day, Darabont’s aforementioned 2007 feature film adaptation remains one of the best King adaptations ever. Featuring a killer cast of familiar faces like Toby Jones, Marcia Gay Harden, Andre Braugher, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, and fan-fave Thomas Jane, Darabont’s film beautifully translates King’s words to a visual medium. Even more remarkable, the movie’s shocking new ending still sticks the landing and has become a treasured deviation by Constant Readers and King himself.

Then, in 2017, a new television series version of “The Mist” was released, where else, but Spike TV. Why Spike, you may ask? Great question. And it’s one many Constant Readers are still baffled by. In fact, everything about this one-season, 10-episode series remains baffling. Not even a cast that included Frances Conroy (American Horror Story), Alyssa Sutherland (Evil Dead Rise), and Dan Butler (Frasier) could save this series from boring itself.

“Here There Be Tygers”

Originally published in the 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, it would take over 50 years for “Here There Be Tygers” to receive the adaptation treatment. Kate Siegel (The Life of Chuck) ended this long-running waiting game on October 31, 2024. Retitled Lily, this new animated short is directed and narrated by Siegel and features new music from TFU (The Flanagan Universe) regulars, The Newton Brothers.

“The Raft”

Despite paling in comparison to its predecessor, 1987’s Creepshow 2 made several very smart decisions. For one, it reunited the dynamic horror duo that was George A. Romero and Stephen King. Like another classic sequel, Lethal Weapon 2, the magic was back. Even if it was in a slightly diminished capacity.

The following wise move Creepshow 2 made was to snatch up “The Raft” and give it a prime slot in the anthology film’s runtime. Perfectly balancing classic creature feature trademarks with the camp-slasher vibes of the 80s, “The Raft” burned itself into many formative young horror fan minds. Though delivering an alternate ending to King’s original story, both sendoffs succeed in leaving nothing but chills in their wake. Do you love? Let us know in the comments.

“Word Processor of the Gods”

Originally published in the January 1983 issue of Playboy, “Word Processor of the Gods” is a heady exploration of the limitations of technology, the poisonous power of regret, and the corrosive nature of power. Dark and unsettling, this potent cocktail of ideas made the story a prime candidate for a visual adaptation. Not surprisingly, George A. Romero recognized the story’s potential and brought the idea to life on November 25, 1984, in Season 1, Episode 8 of Tales from the Darkside. Featuring Bruce Davison (Willard) in the lead role, “Word Processor of the Gods” remains an adaptation worth chasing down and paying heed to.

“Survivor Type”

When Shudder rebooted Creepshow in 2019, and adopted a more traditional television series format, there was no question the series would include some stories pulled from the Stephen King vaults. One such tale the series dug up is the downright gnarly “Survivor Type”.

Featured in A Creepshow Animated Special, the decision to execute this particular story in a fully animated comic book style was brilliant. Featuring voicework by Kiefer Sutherland and Fayna Sanchez, the segment recounts the harrowing tale of a surgeon who winds up shipwrecked with nothing but a dead woman’s body for companionship. As his limited supplies quickly dwindle, the surgeon takes measures so drastic that even King has said they go “a little bit too far.” Unsettling, to say the least, the animated format definitely helps keep a healthy distance between the more unsavory parts of the story a healthy distance away from reality.

First published in 1984 in Weirdbook magazine, “Gramma” boasts some of the more stealthy adaptations spawned from Skeleton Crew. First came an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1986, which featured Barret Oliver (D.A.R.Y.L.) as young Georgie, and Piper Laurie (Carrie) as his mysterious and witchy grandmother.

Next came a full-feature film adaptation in 2014. Directed by Peter Cornwell (The Haunting in Connecticut) and produced by Blumhouse and McG, this Universal Pictures film flew under the radar by being released direct-to-video under the title Mercy. Starring Chandler Riggs (The Walking Dead), Frances O’Connor (The Conjuring 2), Mark Duplass (Creep), and Dylan McDermott (The Clovehitch Killer), there are definitely worse King adaptations that one could watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Honorable Mention: The Dollar Babies

A special shoutout is needed for the dozens and dozens of Dollar Baby films that Skeleton Crew has produced and the crews that made them. There have been so many that it was, frankly, impossible to cover them all here. This incredible program created by King allowed filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for one whole dollar. A true gift to many aspiring or new filmmakers, the Dollar Baby program came to an end in December 2023, but the plethora of films it produced will live on forever in our hearts, in our minds, and on YouTube.

“The Monkey”

Director, writer, and actor Perkins has seemingly always been professionally attracted to the darkly offbeat. With previous works that include films like Gretel & Hansel, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, and the 2024 marketing marvel Longlegs, the thread of black humor and left-of-center approach consistently runs through his projects. Therefore, when it was announced that he would bring “The Monkey” to life in collaboration with James Wan under his Atomic Monster banner, the union just felt right. Easily one of the best recent King adaptations out there, Neon’s 2025 adaptation of The Monkey proves there is still fertile King material to mine if done well.

The Monkey drums into theaters this Friday. Get tickets now and enter to win an exclusive 1/50 resin sculpt made from the original Monkey. 

The post From ‘The Mist’ to ‘The Monkey’: A Guide to Stephen King’s ‘Skeleton Crew’ Adaptations appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Both Siegel and Dastmalchian have become fan favorite actors in the genre space in recent years, Siegel starring in Mike Flanagan’s Hush as well as the TV series’ “The Haunting of Hill House,” “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “Midnight Mass” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Siegel also just made her directorial debut with a segment in Shudder’s V/H/S/BEYOND.

David Dastmalchian starred in this year’s indie hit Late Night with the Devil, and recent credits also include The Boogeyman, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and The Life of Chuck.

Michael Fimognari (The Fall of the House of Usher) is directing the upcoming horror movie Epilogue, fresh off directing four episodes of Flanagan’s “Fall of the House of Usher.”

“Set one year after the zombie apocalypse has supposedly come to an end, the film will follow a desperate couple who set out to find a cure for their infected daughter.”

Luke Barnett and Tanner Thomason wrote the screenplay.

The Coven will launch sales next week at the American Film Market, Deadline also notes.

Todd Garner (Mortal Kombat) produces for Broken Road Productions, alongside Courtney Petrakis, Brittney McDade, and Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) for Red Room Pictures.

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Shout! Studios, in collaboration with Flanagan, Intrepid Pictures, and Blumhouse, announced today that Hush is finally coming to U.S. theaters for a special engagement beginning October 16.

From the press release, “The film has been fully restored and approved by Flanagan. This eagerly anticipated theatrical engagement will showcase a newly restored version of Hush for the first time on the big screen. Additionally, the event screening will feature a livestream Q&A with filmmaker Mike Flanagan and the film’s co-writer and star Kate Siegel. The live Q&A, featuring Flanagan and Siegel, is set to be held at Vidiots in Eagle Rock, California, immediately after the screening, and will be livestreamed to select theaters nationwide.”

In celebration of the special theatrical and Digital release, Shout! Studios has released a new trailer that you can watch below.

Hush “centers on a deaf writer who has retreated into the woods to live a solitary life. She must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.”

Flanagan said of the restoration, “Hush is one of the projects that is closest to my heart, and I cannot think of a better home than Shout! I’m so glad that people will finally be able to rent or purchase the film digitally. I’ve always loved how Shout! Studios champions and treasures their titles, and I also cannot wait for what’s to come… fans of Hush are going to have much to celebrate!”

Directed by Mike Flanagan, Hush boasts a stellar cast of Kate Siegel (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass), John Gallagher Jr. (The Newsroom, 10 Cloverfield Lane), Samantha Sloyan (Midnight Mass, Grey’s Anatomy), and Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica, The Fall of the House of Usher). Written by Flanagan and Siegel, Hush is produced by Trevor Macy, p.g.a. of Intrepid Pictures and Jason Blum, p.g.a. of Blumhouse.

The post Mike Flanagan’s ‘Hush’ Heads To Theaters Next Week For Special Engagement Run appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The collection includes short films from famous horror icons including Stephen King, Paul Tremblay and Heather Langenkamp!

“Scream team Kate Siegel, Krsy Fox and Mali Elfman came together to make a series of short films designed to spook and delight the whole family,” explains the press release. “The shorts introduce classic genre tropes and use a 5-scale pumpkin scare rating to help parents gauge the level of scares for their kids.”

The entire collection of shorts will be played together at the premiere for the series taking place at Vidiots in Los Angeles on October 19th at 1:30 pm – tickets are available to the public and are on sale now. The screening is for audiences 6 years old and up and will have special guest appearances by filmmakers and the puppets from Dimples.

The short films will be released on YouTube starting October 21st and new ones will continue to be released until Halloween.

Go to www.youtube.com/@darkcornersfilms to see the films and for more updates follow @darkcornersfilms

Below is a full list of the films, writers, and directors:

• The Notes – W: Paul Tremblay D: Mike Parker
• Max and the Messy Monster – W: Heather Langenkamp D: Jon Mann-Krieger
• Dimples – W: Kate Siegel D: Dominic Hure
• Scariest Skeleton – W: Mali Elfman D: Mali Elfman and Pete Scalzitti IV

• Monster Eyes – W: Krsy Fox D: Noah Greene and Krsy Fox
• Miss Crow – W/D: Alanah Pearce Art/Animation: Mat Ringstead
• Lily: W: Stephen King D: Kate Siegel Art/Animation: Pete Scalzitti IV

The post “Dark Corners”- Kate Siegel & Krsy Fox’s Animated YouTube Series Highlighted by Stephen King, Paul Tremblay and Heather Langenkamp! [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The film follows “a group of teenage friends who sold their souls to the devil. Naturally, life grants them different paths: a rock star, a tech mogul, and a high-profile activist. Years later, they must rely on an old classmate to try and escape Hell’s grasp before the contract’s deadline of their 25th high school reunion.”

Written by Ellen Adair and Eric Gilde, Damned If You Do marks the directorial debut of Jake Rubin and Evan Metzold.

It’s not yet clear which role Siegel will play, but expect the film to have a lot of fun with its soul-selling premise. Rubin and Metzold told Deadline, “We feel very lucky to be working with such a talented and hilarious cast. They make our job easy and bring a wealth of experience to the table that has helped to elevate an already spectacular script. Between our incredible cast and crew, we have formed a remarkable team that truly feels like family, and we are excited to collaborate with this group on our debut feature.”

The pair added that they “feel very blessed to be working on such a damn great production with such a damn good cast and crew. It’s almost as if we sold our own souls.”

Siegel is a frequent Mike Flanagan collaborator and will be seen next starring in Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck, set to make its premiere in September at TIFF. The actor/producer will also be making her directorial debut this October, with the seventh installment of the anthology series V/H/S/Beyond set to release on Shudder. So we’ll have plenty to keep us busy while we wait to learn more about Damned If You Do.

OGM’s Matthew R. Cooper and Uwakokunre (Kokie) Imasogie are producing alongside Lior Haas. Executive producers include Rubin, Metzold, and Siegel.

The post Kate Siegel Must Escape Hell’s Grasp in Dark Comedy ‘Damned If You Do’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

For starters, V/H/S/Beyond will premiere on Shudder October 4, 2024.

From Shudder and Studio71, the upcoming seventh installment of the series “will feature six new bloodcurdling tapes, placing horror at the forefront of a sci-fi-inspired hellscape.”

Here’s the full list of segment titles and directors for this year’s V/H/S/Beyond, which is packed with big names including Justin Long, Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel…

• “Stork”: Directed by Jordan Downey, screenplay by Downey and Kevin Stewart
• “Fur Babies”: Written and directed by Christian Long and Justin Long
• “Live and Let Dive”: Directed by Justin Martinez, story by Martinez and Ben Turner, screenplay by Turner
• “Dream Girl”: Directed by Virat Pal, written by Pal and Evan Dickson
• “Stowaway”: Directed by Kate Siegel, written by Mike Flanagan
• Plus a special presentation by Jay Cheel (“Cursed Films”)

V/H/S/Beyond is produced by Josh Goldbloom, James Harris and Michael Schreiber, and executive produced by Adam Boorstin. Check out the official announcement graphic below.

Created by Bloody Disgusting and Brad Miska, the found footage horror anthology franchise V/H/S kicked off in 2012 and has to date spawned five sequels including V/H/S/2, V/H/S: Viral, V/H/S/94, V/H/S/99 and V/H/S/85, and two spin-offs, Siren and Kids vs. Aliens.

The post ‘V/H/S/Beyond’ Coming to Shudder This Halloween; Meet the Directors appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But that’s soon going to change, Mike Flanagan promises. Flanagan and his team have re-acquired the rights to Hush, and it’s soon headed to streaming and physical media as well!

Flanagan explained to Slash Film at a recent event, “We took it back because I really value physical media. And Netflix, by policy, it does not work in their business plan. So we took it back. We do have a new home for it. I can’t say where. I can say there will be a physical release, and that there will be a lot of really awesome surprises that we’ve been working on for a year to make this release awesome. It’s something that will be really exciting.”

“If you’ve been looking for Hush and it’s nowhere to be found, it will be back soon. It will be everywhere,” he adds. “You’ll be able to stream it. You’ll be able to have it in your collection, and it’s gonna be worth the wait because we did some really awesome new stuff for it.”

In Hush, “A deaf and mute writer (Kate Siegel) who retreated into the woods to live a solitary life must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.”

Meagan Navarro wrote here on Bloody Disgusting a few years back, “A simple home invasion story done with style and skill, Hush may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s a great time. It’s a straightforward story, but with nail-biting tension, fantastic sound design, and visual flair that makes this cat and mouse thriller one that tends to leave you breathless.”

The post ‘Hush’: Mike Flanagan Teases Streaming and Physical Release for His Home Invasion Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

A Story to Scare My Son brings to life the disturbing tale of the same name, written by R.D. Ovenfriend.

Subscribe and stream the episode below and explore the lore of other items in the shop, with a rotating cast that includes Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel, Devon Sawa, Scout Taylor Compton, Joseph Winter, Melanie Stone, David Dastmalchian, Sara Paxton, Jocelin Donahue and more!

Listen on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

For an uninterrupted experience, find stories from The Antique Dealer’s private collection and more at The Obsidian Covenant (Patreon).

Follow the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings on:

Instagram: @antiquariumpod
Twitter: @antiquariumpod

The post Richard Brake Appears in New Episode of Bloody FM’s “The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Every week, join the antique dealer as he takes you through the shop’s collection, where every relic has a sordid and bizarre tale to tell. Each trip to the Antiquarium is framed with incredible theme music courtesy of The Newton Brothers (Midnight Mass, Five Nights At Freddy’s), combining unique immersive elements including interactive magic and an ever evolving roster of actors and narrators: Jocelin Dohanue (House Of The Devil), Sara Paxton (Last House On The Left, The Innkeepers), Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within, Scare Me), Nils Frykdahl (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Devon Sawa (Final Destination, Idle Hands), Scout Taylor Compton (Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN), Joseph Winter and Melanie Stone (Deadstream, V/H/S/99), Natalie Alyn Lind (Pet Sematary : Bloodlines), Addison Peacock (Nosleep) and more!

The latest episode, “As I Got On The Elevator, The Man Getting Off Whispered Something Strange To Me” is narrated and performed by Mike Flanagan (Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, The Fall Of The House of Usher) and features Kate Siegel (Hush, Midnight Mass), David Dastmalchian (Late Night With The Devil, Oppenheimer, Suicide Squad) and Leah Kilpatrick (Lovers Divided, Netflix’s Super-Fan Builds). The story arrives courtesy of Vancouver based horror writer, Moe T.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is produced, engineered and curated by The Boo Crew’s Trevor and Lauren Shand and is available now, on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts and at the links below!

Follow The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings on:

Instagram: @antiquariumpod
Twitter: @antiquariumpod

The post The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings – New Episode of Bloody FM Horror Fiction Podcast Features Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The limited series from Intrepid Pictures is “based on multiple works from Poe.” 8 episodes have been ordered. Flanagan and Michael Fimognari will each direct four episodes.

The ensemble cast will include Dracula, Masters of the Universe and The Box‘s Frank Langella, as well as Carla Gugino (Gerald’s Game, “The Haunting of Hill House”), Mary McDonnell (Scream 4), Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep), and Mark Hamill, all names that were announced yesterday. And today brings a second big ole batch of casting news.

Henry Thomas, T’Nia Miller, Kyleigh Curran, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Sauriyan Sapkota, Zach Gilford, Michael Trucco, Paola Núñez, Katie Parker, Malcolm Goodwin, Crystal Balint, Aya Furukawa, Daniel Jun, Matt Biedel, Ruth Codd, Igby Rigney, Annabeth Gish, and Robert Longstreet will also star, many of them returning players from previous Flanagan and Netflix collaborations. Of note, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Robert Longstreet and Zach Gilford just starred in “Midnight Mass,” while T’Nia Miller was a scene-stealer in “Bly Manor.”

“The Fall of the House of Usher” marks the fifth series for Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy at Netflix under their Intrepid Pictures overall deal, including: the fan-beloved “The Haunting of” series – “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor”; the recently launched and critically-lauded “Midnight Mass,” and the upcoming “The Midnight Club.”

Executive producers include Flanagan, Trevor Macy, Emmy Grinwis and Michael Fimognari. Below, you can stream Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel’s recent appearance on our own flagship interview podcast, The Boo Crew.

The post “The Fall of the House of Usher” – Full Cast for Mike Flanagan’s Edgar Allan Poe Series Also Includes Henry Thomas and Kate Siegel! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Jenn (Kate Siegel) shows up to her best friend’s housewarming with a dead plant and an admission of drinking the bottle of wine initially intended as a gift. She’s without a job and still struggling to get over her ex, Brian (Jaime M. Callica). Then her best friend (Lucie Guest) recommends a new therapist Dr. Collin Meade (Jason O’Meara) for some self-help to get her life back on track. It works, at least at first. But Jenn starts to lose gaps in her memory, then control over her life after a few intense sessions.

Angel and Coote, working from a script they wrote with Richard D’Ovidio (The Call), surprisingly avoid employing any expected tropes with hypnotism to toy with audiences; only Jenn is the subject of mind games here. Even then, Hypnotic shows its hand early and often. A few hypnotic swirl camera tricks and a blackout or so later, Jenn quickly deduces something is amiss, but getting the mustache-twirling villain Collin out of her life won’t be so easy and comes with a few dumb decisions.

The story is as straightforward as it is generic. Not even the conceit of hypnotism can reinvigorate a basic thriller formula. When enticing Jenn to participate in his unique form of therapy, an early line by Collin presents an idea that Jenn might have ultimate control over her subconscious, teasing out a very different outcome than the bland route taken. A course that would’ve given Jenn a bit more autonomy in her bid for survival.

The directors bypass the unreliable narrator and gaslighting tropes, too; Jenn doesn’t have a difficult time convincing those in her orbit that Collin has tampered with her mind. Then again, Collin doesn’t see anyone as a threat, either. It becomes a systematic cornering of the damsel, reducing stakes in the process. The film also presents Collin as someone that can exploit someone’s worst fears to devastating degrees, and then skims right by that, too.

Siegel makes for a likable lead with no trouble engendering rooting interest, even in a narrative without much depth or surprises. Callica is endearing in his brief appearances, and Dulé Hill is solid as Jenn’s most pivotal ally. While Jenn gets a smidge more fleshed out as the lead, all are rendered as basic archetypes rather than characters. O’Meara fares the worst, trapped in a one-note role of conventional villain.

Despite its brisk pace, Hypnotic makes for a sleepy lull rather than an adrenaline-pumping thriller. The concept of a woman losing control over her mind as an insidious predator takes up residence sounds fascinating, but Hypnotic never bothers to explore in any engaging way. The narrative plays it too safe and straightforward, making for a serviceable but generic effort. Not even Siegel or loud music stings can wake this up from tidy slumber.

Hypnotic is available on Netflix as of October 27, 2021.

The post [Review] Netflix’s ‘Hypnotic’ Skips Mind Games in Favor of Generic Thriller appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In addition to starring in Netflix and Mike Flanagan’s new series “Midnight Mass”, Hush, “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor” star Kate Siegel is also headed back to Netflix with Hypnotic, which is set to premiere on the streaming service tomorrow, October 27!

In the film, Siegel plays a young woman seeking self-improvement who enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist, but after a handful of intense sessions, soon discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.

Bloody Disgusting has an exclusive clip from Hypnotic in which Siegel’s Jenn listens to a voicemail from her ex-fiance Bryan (Jaime M. Callica) before receiving a call from an unknown number.

“This is the first moment in the film in which we start to understand that something is wrong,” directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House) tell Bloody Disgusting. “We knew we wanted to shoot this scene in a way that captured Jenn’s mental state as she’s brought back to present – using the camera to pay homage to the classic ‘hypnotic swirl’.”

The post Thrilling Clip from Netflix’s ‘Hypnotic’ Unlocks Kate Siegel’s Mind [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In addition to starring in Netflix and Mike Flanagan’s new series “Midnight Mass”, Hush, “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor” star Kate Siegel is also headed back to Netflix with Hypnotic, set to premiere on the streaming service October 27.

Check out the trailer below, first shared by Collider today.

In the film…

“A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist, but after a handful of intense sessions, soon discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.”

Jason O’Mara and Dulé Hill also star.

Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House) directed.

Richard D’Ovidio (The Call) wrote the script with Angel and Coote.

The post “Midnight Mass” Star Kate Siegel’s Mind Is Unlocked in Netflix Horror Movie ‘Hypnotic’ [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I don’t remember the first time I started thinking about the doomed residents of Crockett Island, but I recently dug up the pages from my first stab at a Midnight Mass novel from early 2010. I have also found pages from an attempt at a feature script dated May 2012, before I quit my job as a reality TV show editor and began prepping Oculus – my first “real” movie – later that summer. 

I have a more advanced screenplay from 2013, and I remember the moment when I realized it wasn’t going to work: I was well over 150 pages into the draft, Riley Flynn and Father Paul Hill were having their first consequential conversation about alcohol (this would later become their first “AA meeting” scene). 150 pages is longer than most finished screenplays and I wasn’t even close to midpoint yet. This thing was always too big to be a movie. 

First attempts to imagine it as a series go back to 2014, and I remember the fear when I shared my pile of unfinished pages with Trevor Macy and Jeff Howard for the first time. Trevor had produced Oculus and Before I Wake at that point, both of which I’d co-written with Jeff, but neither knew Mass existed. It was the project I clung to the hardest, a story so personal to me that I was reluctant to share it at first, even with my most trusted and frequent collaborators. But my agents were keen to get us into television, a medium exploding with daring, unique long-form storytelling opportunities – so I turned over the abandoned screenplay, the abandoned novel, and the rough television pitch outline and went to work developing Midnight Mass as a television series.

We took the pitch out in 2014, taking almost a dozen meetings at networks around town, where I nervously performed a well-rehearsed, 45-minute presentation. We had printed maps of Tangier, Virginia, which was the primary inspiration for Crockett Island itself. Images of crosses, revival services, and it was a perfectly fine presentation, if a little green around the edges, but one by one, each of those networks passed. 

That was my first experience in television, and it was hardly unusual. It was fun, truth be told, and even though we were disappointed that no one wanted to make the show, it was exciting to be in the rooms. We didn’t know it then, but it would all come back around. In fact, when we pitched Midnight Mass at Netflix in 2014, the young executive who sat across the table was Blair Fetter. He didn’t buy Midnight Mass that day, but a few years later I’d sit across from him again with another television pitch for The Haunting of Hill House. Netflix would buy that show, and it would change my life forever. 

In between, Midnight Mass never left my mind. In 2015, I began filming a little indie feature called Hush. I’d written it with my girlfriend, Kate Siegel. We’d be married the following year, embarking on what would be the collaboration of our lives, but for now we were focused on making a tiny movie that was an intense crucible for us as artists and as a couple. 

We needed to come up with a book for Kate’s character Maddie Young to have written. It was a little bittersweet when the idea struck that it should be Midnight Mass. Why not, I figured: this might be as close as that story would ever get to being made. (The fact that Kate ended up playing Erin Greene in Midnight Mass is particularly delightful to me now.)

We printed up a mock cover for Midnight Mass. We needed footage of Maddie actually writing her book, so I just pulled up my abandoned novel and gave the first chapter to the props department. I still smile watching Kate typing on her laptop in that movie, talking about the “Jesus fish” on the back of the luxury car (from the novel’s prologue, detailing Riley’s drunk driving accident – that ichthys is now the first image of the series). I also get a real kick out of watching Samantha Sloyan (who will later play Bev Keane in Midnight Mass) as Maddie’s doomed neighbor Sarah, telling her how much she “loved Riley, and loved Erin” when reading her fictional novel.  

More than a year later, in October 2016, we began filming Gerald’s Game. In Stephen King’s novel, there is a shelf above the protagonist’s head as she lays handcuffed for the duration of the story, and on that shelf are a few items – a glass of water, a magazine, and various knickknacks. A book. I knew immediately I wanted that book to be Midnight Mass. Jessie – played by the amazing Carla Gugino – would reach up and grab the book at a pivotal moment, throwing it at a feral dog as it approached the body of her deceased husband. A “blink and you’ll miss it” moment, but for a few more seconds, Midnight Mass was still alive.

A crew member asked me, after we shot that scene, what Midnight Mass was. I smiled and said it was the best thing I never made. 

I was raised Catholic. My father grew up in the fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had left those grey waters for a life at sea with the Coast Guard, so we moved around a fair bit. I served as an altar boy at Our Lady, Star of the Sea on Governors Island, New York. Governors Island is a tiny community, 172 acres located 800 yards south of Manhattan. It was a Coast Guard base when I lived there, and we were stationed there twice in my childhood. The island is abandoned now, Our Lady, Star of the Sea is in disrepair, but it is still a beautiful chapel, nestled on this tiny island that was part of a big city – but somehow felt like its own tiny, isolated little world. 

The majority of my childhood was spent in Bowie, Maryland where I attended Saint Pius X elementary school, then Archbishop Spalding High School, and was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Parish. I served most of my masses in the fine, modern “main church,” but was always fascinated by the “Chapel on the Hill” – a tiny, historic building up a winding path in the woods. 

The Chapel on the Hill was built in 1741 when it was illegal to worship publicly as a Catholic. It was partially destroyed in a fire in 1853 and rebuilt in 1856. It was surrounded by a cemetery that must be one of the oldest in Maryland, and after serving masses in the Chapel I’d wander the gravestones. I remember seeing faded, weathered stones dating back to the late 1700s. I remember seeing gravestones for children. I remember seeing gravestones for one entire family, all with the same year of death. Oh, the stories I’d imagine. 

I was a good altar boy, devout, studious, appropriately serious for my age. I liked church. I learned how to harmonize while singing along with the choir every Sunday (I was fortunate enough to add my voice to many of these same hymns as they appear in Midnight Mass, rendered beautifully by The Newton Brothers), though I preferred the acoustic folk group who performed the less formal masses. 

My parish was presided over by several priests as I grew up. The first was an old Irish Monsignor, tough as nails, who would later succumb to Alzheimer’s. The anxiety that the parish felt at his deterioration and eventual replacement hangs heavily in the early moments of this show, and I do recall the altar boys intervening to steer him gently through moments of the mass, as Warren describes in the pilot. The second was a young priest, progressive and casual by comparison, who was funny and sharp and endlessly approachable.

Both were good, honorable men who practiced what they preached, crafted some roaring homilies, served their community and lived lives dedicated to morality, decency, kindness and God, at least as they understood Him. They were good men. The horrifying and indefensible scandals that rocked the Catholic Church worldwide did not touch the parish in which I grew up, I believe, and for that I will always be grateful.

I served on the altar until I left for college, and it was there that I began to discover the world outside of the Catholic Faith. I took my first World Religion course my freshman year, and it blew my mind. I realized that, for as many years as I attended weekly mass, and despite a life spent in Catholic school, I actually understood very little about Catholicism. It occurred to me that I’d never actually read the bible; I’d simply had portions of it read to me every week at church, or select readings assigned and discussed at school. But I’d never read the book myself. I decided to remedy that. I decided to look for God.

So I read the Bible. And then I kept reading. If I was going to look for God, I was going to look everywhere. I devoted myself to studying Judaism. Hinduism. Islam. I connected pretty intensely with Buddhism for a few years in there, even seeking out temples in Los Angeles as I tried to further explore it, but ultimately the book that impacted me the most was God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. That led to Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. But I found more spiritual resonance reading Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan than I found in two decades of Bible study.

I was energized by these years of research, suddenly looking back at my childhood full of questions. There was anger there, certainly. But there was hunger for knowledge as well. I was struck by how vastly different the religions of the world were, but also how uncannily similar… and I was struck again by how vulnerable they were to fanaticism and fundamentalism. How easily a religion supposedly built on love could be made to breed hate. 

And it wasn’t just about religion – I was struck as well by how fundamentalist thinking could permeate and corrupt any belief system. How it could appear and spread within the scientific community as well. Nationalism. Politics. The media. How easily faith could be weaponized against the faithful. How incentivized we could be made to believe something in the absence of evidence – or, even more disturbing, in the presence of contradictory fact. I was horrified at how this cognitive dissonance was, in some circles, presented as a virtue. 

My feelings about religion were very complicated. I was fascinated, but angry. Looking at various religions, I was moved and amazed by their propensity for forgiveness and faith, but horrified by their exclusionism, tribalism, and tendency toward fanaticism and fundamentalism. I found a lot of these various religions’ ideas to be inspiring and beautiful, but I also found their corruptions to be grotesque and unforgivable. I wasn’t going to support those kinds of institutions any longer. I was only interested in humanism, rationalism, science… and empathy.

I was also, it turned out, an alcoholic. 

Alcoholism had run fairly rampant on both sides of my extended family. Both of my parents had warned me growing up that I may be more susceptible to it than I wanted to think. I had also emerged from college as a pretty serious problem drinker, though I was years away from admitting that to myself. 

It’s fascinating to me, looking back at early drafts of Midnight Mass, just how plainly my own issues with alcohol were driving the story. Riley Flynn, former altar boy turned atheist, stares through bloodshot eyes at the car accident he caused, watching an innocent teenager die on the pavement because he drove drunk. And this is how we meet the protagonist. Riley was always a thinly disguised surrogate, an avatar unlikely to fool anyone except myself, who wouldn’t admit how much I had in common with my own character for many years. 

My relationship with alcohol was not at all healthy. I’d be able to drink excessively without consequence 9 times out of 10 (at first anyway), but man, that tenth time… the apologetic phone calls were almost as bad as the hangovers. Once the booze took over, I learned – repeatedly – that I had some truly self-destructive impulses. Riley says he felt like he had another self, a saboteur who emerged from within when he drank too much, and that’s exactly how I felt when I was in the grips of it. 

I let this go on far too long, quick to deny it was a problem even as it led to increasingly self-destructive behavior. It cost friendships, it damaged relationships, and it would have killed me – or worse, it would have killed someone else. That was always the nightmare scenario, and that was why my most personal story – Midnight Mass, the story I could never entirely put down – opened the way it did. It faded in on my worst, most ingrained anxiety: not that I would die because of my drinking, but that I would kill someone else… and live. 

As I write this, I’m nearly three years sober and profoundly grateful that I was able to recognize my problem before it cost me my family, my career, or even my life, all of which were at risk at one time or another. All of that is in this show as well. All of that turmoil, regret and shame, all rolled up in the rest of it – the beauty of forgiveness and faith, set against the corruption of fanaticism. That feeling that we are alone in the cosmos, at war with the wish that we aren’t. The danger of moral certainty, the frailty of good intentions, and the defiant endurance of faith itself, even in the face of annihilation. 

That even in the worst of it, in the absence of light – and hope – we sing. 

Now, all we had to do was somehow get this show made. A modern parable about belief, addiction, recovery, redemption, fanaticism and forgiveness is a tough sell by anyone’s math, even if it is a horror show. Fortunately for me, Netflix was willing to take that risk.

The Haunting of Hill House was a surprise hit. It had been a grueling production experience, in many ways the opposite of Midnight Mass. The show had nearly killed a lot of us. I’d lost more than 40 pounds while shooting, every day was a battle, sometimes for the bare essentials, and often fought without hope or witness. While the final product is something I will always be enormously proud of, it remains the worst professional experience of my life. 

And when the show was finished, there was no real way to know how it would land. It actually came as a big surprise when the show emerged as a hit. Everyone seemed surprised – Netflix, Paramount Television, Amblin – suddenly the world changed, the audience kept growing, and my career in television – which I feared was dead on arrival after that production wrapped – was now a viable reality.

Netflix was interested in an overall deal, which would mean that Trevor Macy – who I was now partnered with in Intrepid Pictures – and I would make television exclusively for Netflix for the next four years. It meant they’d want more shows, and that we’d have more control over the process this time. And it meant a new life for Midnight Mass. 

I sat at a table one day with Trevor and with Blair Fetter once again, and now also Laura Delahaye, who had been one of our executives on Hill House. Blair and Laura had spearheaded getting us into Netflix in an overall deal and were taking point on our slate, and we were laying out our agenda for the first few years together. 

The first priority would be The Haunting of Bly Manor, the follow-up season that was at the center of the table as we negotiated our new deal with our new home streamer. But with that was also Midnight Mass. We all laughed at the fact that Blair had passed on this show years earlier. They were both very excited, though, that we’d be moving forward with it now. And with Bly Manor in the pipeline and our next few years securely set at Netflix, Blair and Laura championed the project to Peter Friedlander and Cindy Holland. After years of uncertainty, Netflix greenlit Midnight Mass.

The Bly Manor Writers’ Room opened in the Spring of 2019. It was on Lankershim in Hollywood, and I spent my mornings there getting that show into shape. I’d leave after lunch, drive ten minutes up the road to another office on Cahuenga, where the Midnight Mass Writers’ Room was running concurrently. Those days of going back and forth between the two rooms were intense and disorienting, but we managed to get both shows into fighting shape throughout 2019 while I finished post-production on Doctor Sleep for Warner Bros.

We began filming Bly in Vancouver in the fall of 2019. I was only directing one episode of that series, though, because I needed to be laying the groundwork for Midnight Mass. On weekends I’d scout locations, refine the scripts, and gear up for the looming production. The plan was that Bly would wrap in February 2020, and we’d roll right into Midnight Mass that March without missing a beat.

Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find an existing community that would work for Crockett Island. The islands near Vancouver were either too developed to give us the feel we wanted, or too distant and challenging for the crew to access. It was clear we’d have to build Crockett. Every structure, every road, every streetlight – every little thing. 

And we were building it, quietly, while Bly was shooting. We took over a huge portion of Garry Point Park in Richmond, building our Crockett houses on the shoreline. Locals were curious (and a little irritated) about this installment of houses right in the middle of their park, and we’d use their fishing port as our marina as well. The rest of Crockett’s exteriors were built on a farm in Langley, an hour away from our stages at Bridge Studios, which housed our interior sets. 

To be honest, I’m still astounded by what we built. Steve Arnold, our Production Designer, essentially created a living, breathing island community out of nothing. Every single element you see on the show is his design – there was no Crockett. He built it all. And walking among it, working in it for so long, I realized how immersive and unique this show could be. 

Our structures were standing, the paint still drying, the cast had traveled in, we’d done a table read of all 7 episodes that had the cast in tears by the end… we were ready to go. 

And then the world shut down.

We were days away from shooting when COVID-19 shut down Canada. Around us, productions closed at breakneck pace. And then the call came from Netflix that we would be shutting down, hopefully for just a few weeks. I remember looking out the window of the plane as I flew home to Los Angeles on the day the border closed. From the air, I could look down and see Gary Pointe Park. I could see our buildings, along the edge of the water. I could see Crockett Island, standing abandoned as I was leaving it behind. 

No one knew what would happen next. It was entirely possible that Netflix would just cancel the show, write off what we’d spent so far, cut our losses and turn to something else. It would cost more, we knew, for them to get it back up. More money than they’d initially wanted to spend on this show. Would they want to keep it going at all? Or was this project doomed to be the one we just never could get off its feet? 

For months, we waited. The uncertainty was overwhelming, and I knew the cast and crew were feeling it too. There were a lot of phone calls, and lot of hypotheticals, but frankly no one knew what production would look like in this new world. There were many days I was convinced the show was dead, and that the next time the phone rang it would be to tell us the bad news. 

But then, in early June of 2020, the call came in that we’d be going back to Vancouver, and that Midnight Mass would essentially be one of the first Netflix shows to go back up in this new COVID reality. It was surreal. We would be helping define what production looked like in this new world, we would be the tip of the spear in establishing and refining the new protocols. I was back on a plane in late June 2020 and landed in a completely different industry. 

Our sets were still standing but weathered by months in the elements. Months of exposure, weather, and overgrowth that only made them better. Because we had limits on the number of people we could put on the show, the concept of the oil spill having decimated Crockett in the years prior was added to the story to help explain why it was so unpopulated. This was entirely about COVID, we couldn’t have extras on set at the beginning, and we didn’t know when or if that would change. But it added something to the story, and the world of Crockett actually deepened because of it. 

We started shooting on August 17, 2020. Weeks before other productions, who would get headlines for “resurrecting Vancouver production,” had even gotten off the ground. We were the test case; we were the canary in the coal mine for Netflix. We learned how to navigate COVID in real time. We held our breath, we were terrified every day of shutting down, and kept our heads down and we worked.

And it was the best production experience of my life. 

This cast, this crew… I don’t know if anything will ever come close to what this was. To what this meant to me. This was a profoundly positive experience, every day, even when it was hard. We wrapped on December 15, 2020, and we didn’t shut down one time. Not one day. And every day on set was a gift. 

A lot has changed since I first wrote about that ichthys on the back of the car, reflecting siren light. I’ve changed, the world has changed, the industry has changed. This show was conceived by a young man in the grips of barely functional alcoholism, a complicated anger at organized religion, and a growing interest in forgiveness and humanism. That filmmaker has changed a lot in the decade since that story started and began filming this story as a sober husband and father. The way we watch television has changed, the industry has changed, the world has changed. 

I don’t believe in miracles in the way they’re described in the Bible. But I do believe in miracles in a different way. The miracles in our lives, some we make, some simply happen to us. The miracles of parenthood, of creation, of growth, and of forgiveness. This show is a miracle, I do believe that. It’s a tiny, fragile bubble, and it clung on for years and years, finally coming into existence quietly, delicately in between moments of seismic, continental shifts in our world. 

I’m so glad that it exists, and I’m so grateful to all the amazing artists who built it out of nothing. I’m grateful to Laura Delahaye and Blair Fetter for championing and greenlighting the project, and I’m grateful to Blair for passing on it those years ago when it honestly wasn’t ready. I’m grateful to my wife Kate Siegel, who saved my life and who built my heaven on Earth. To my entire cast, which remains the best ensemble I’ve ever worked with, and who are now family to me. To my cinematographer Michael Fimognari, whom I consider my brother, and who has outdone himself and crafted something unforgettable. To my actual brother James Flanagan, who poured as much of his self and childhood into these scripts as I did. And to my partner Trevor Macy, himself an artist and creator, who has been steadfast in willing this show into existence for years, and who built it in the dirt with all of us in what I know was probably the most challenging producing experience of his career. 

I’m grateful to the many people, both in the cast and on the crew, some of whom I’ve worked with before – some many times – over the years, and who all gave career-best work in service of this story, lifting each other up, challenging each other daily, setting the bar ever higher for us all. 

I think back on those various past versions of myself, all of whom touched and shaped this story at different times along the way, with their anger, their fear, their addiction, their existential crises. All of those versions of me are in conversation with each other on this show – the altar boy, the atheist, the scientist, the believer, the moderate, the student, the parent, the child, the alcoholic – and I am grateful for all of them. There was so much I wanted to say, every time I sat down to type about the people of Crockett Island; so much I thought I knew, so much I didn’t know. 

It’s a funny and beautiful thing when a story takes on a life of its own. It hasn’t happened often in my experience, but man oh man, it happened here. It took all these years, in fact, for me to realize that Riley Flynn – my most imperfect avatar – wasn’t even the star of this story after all.

Religion, I believe, is one of the ways we attempt to answer the two Great Questions that ache within us all: “how shall we live,” and “what happens when we die.” I don’t know the answer to the second question (although my thoughts, wishes, and even my best guess are articulated in this show), but Midnight Mass has, over the years, helped me at least begin to answer that first question. I hope you enjoy Midnight Mass, and I wish you all love, luck, and forgiveness on your journeys beyond. 

And if you happen to think on those two Great Questions, do let me know if you figure them out. I’d love to know the answers, though I expect I never will, not really. As far as I can tell, though, the second question only matters in how it affects the first. 

The post The Deeply Personal Horror of “Midnight Mass” – Guest Essay by Filmmaker Mike Flanagan appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns home to the small community of Crockett Island to pick up the pieces of his life. He committed a horrendous sin that’s left him disgraced in the eyes of many of the island’s residents, including his dad (Henry Thomas). Riley’s homecoming coincides with the arrival of the charismatic Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), who seems to inspire a series of miracles that incurs religious fervor like no other. The real question becomes whether these miracles are a gift from God or if they come with a price.

Flanagan, who directed all seven episodes, bides his time in building the horror to present the interior lives of this community. Riley is merely the gateway into this brilliantly cast ensemble, many of which are recurring players in Flanagan’s works. Two welcome Riley back with open arms, his mother Annie (Kristin Lehman) and childhood sweetheart Erin Greene (Kate Siegel). From that center of this twisted web spins out an intricate tapestry of an isolated community, all with different holes in their hearts that the allure of a higher power promises to fill.

But just when you feel you have your fingers on the pulse of this quaint little village and all of its faults, Flanagan drops in a visceral horror moment that catches you by the throat. It’s subtle, at first. Just enough to hook you into hitting play immediately on the subsequent episode, and then it builds. And builds. Dread simmers just beneath the surface, the alarm bells ringing in the distance until it crescendos into a full-scale reign of terror of biblical proportions. What’s happening is evident but unspoken by design- this is a supernatural depiction of temptation and corruption, redemption and salvation. Of the selfish and selfless.

Nearly all of the characters garner empathy, even the most broken, save one cruel antagonist. The trademark Flanagan monologues are in abundance here and allow the actors to shine in riveting ways. Supporting player Robert Longstreet rips your heart right out of your chest, outmatching his memorable speech from The Haunting of Hill House. Gilford and Siegel bring a quiet, reflective peace. Annabeth Gish and Rahul Kohli infuse their characters with a cool-headed intelligence that leaves you desperate for them to walk away unscathed. But while Midnight Mass works as an ensemble, Linklater’s magnetic turn clinches the entire thing together. Father Paul’s arc is the most dramatic, a man who buys into his faith so thoroughly that it’s blinding, both a blessing and a dark, dark curse.

Even when it’s apparent to the horror fan what’s transpiring, Flanagan still manages to avoid a predictable trajectory. The human cost is jaw-dropping and audacious, and guessing fates or outcomes becomes impossible. It’s as thrilling as it can be heartbreaking. The one flaw to this utterly compelling series, though, is its messy conclusion. The emotional beats hit hard, and the actors sell the hell out of their story’s end even when some of the narrative choices and rules get a little sloppy. Questions of easier paths or dangling threads not taken threaten to overshadow the perfection up until this point.

Then again, that flawed ending thematically fits; it requires a leap of faith in specific ways. But not even a small stumbling in the final act can diminish what Flanagan’s created in Midnight Mass. This type of horror leaves a mark. It’s as though Flanagan became such a quick study of what makes Stephen King’s small-town horror tales resonate and is now primed to outpace the master.

Midnight Mass releases on Netflix on September 24, 2021.

The post [Review] ‘Midnight Mass’ Cuts Deep and Instills Profound Faith for Mike Flanagan’s Horror Storytelling appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Bloody Disgusting has a first look at the film in which Siegel stars as a young woman seeking self-improvement who enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist, but after a handful of intense sessions, soon discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.

Jason O’Mara and Dulé Hill also star.

Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House) directed. Richard D’Ovidio (The Call) wrote the script with Angel and Coote.

The post First Look at “Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” Star Kate Siegel in Netflix Horror Movie ‘Hypnotic’ [Images] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We’ve learned today that “Midnight Mass,” directed by Flanagan, will be available to Netflix members worldwide on September 24, 2021. Additionally, the first trailer has arrived.

Flanagan writes in a note provided to Bloody Disgusting this morning, “Midnight Mass is my favorite project so far. The ideas at the root of this show scare me to my core.”

Take your first trip to Crockett Island by watching the teaser below…

“Midnight Mass” tells the tale of a small, isolated island community whose existing divisions are amplified by the return of a disgraced young man (Zach Gilford) and the arrival of a charismatic priest (Hamish Linklater). When Father Paul’s appearance on Crockett Island coincides with unexplained and seemingly miraculous events, a renewed religious fervor takes hold of the community – but do these miracles come at a price?

The seven episode limited series also stars Kate Siegel, Rahul Abburi, Crystal Balint, Matt Biedel, Alex Essoe, Annarah Cymone, Annabeth Gish, Rahul Kohli, Kristin Lehman, Robert Longstreet, Igby Rigney, Samantha Sloyan, Henry Thomas, and Michael Trucco. The series is executive produced by Flanagan and Trevor Macy for Intrepid Pictures.

Interesting to note, the project has ties to both Hush and Gerald’s Game. “Midnight Mass” was the book Maddie Young wrote in Hush, and it later appeared in Gerald’s Game.

The post [Trailer] Mike Flanagan’s Netflix Horror Series “Midnight Mass” Will Premiere in September! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Prime Cuts / Weekdays at 5:30pm PST include:

• The Haunting of Molly Hartley
• Ringu 2
• Bride of Re-Animator
• Deep Red
• The Hills Have Eyes

Also featured this week are Mimesis: Nosferatu, Silent Night Bloody Night, Smile, Ringu, 20 Ft Below: The Darkness Descending, and Vampyres. Catch new Bloody Disgusting Originals Hello Horror, Bloody Bites, and The Boo Crew featuring Sara Paxton and Kate Siegel.

We now also have even more ways to tune in. Find us at channel 770 on The Roku Channel, streaming on your PlayStation and Android TV via Rad, and now at channel 507 on SelectTV via the web, Fire TV, and Apple TV!

Bloody Disgusting TV is free streaming horror 24/7 featuring movies and exclusive bloody originals including the horror variety show Hello Horror with Vanessa Decker, interviews with the biggest names in horror on The Boo Crew, and the best in horror shorts on Bloody Bites. See more and how you can tune in at https://bloody-disgusting.com/bdtv

The post ‘Deep Red,’ ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and More Free Horror Streaming This Week on Bloody Disgusting TV appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The upcoming horror movie was announced by Variety today, with the project’s cast at this point in time also including Jason O’Mara and Dulé Hill. In Hypnotic…

“A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist. But after a handful of intense sessions, she soon discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.”

Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House) are directing.

Richard D’Ovidio (The Call) is writing the script with Angel and Coote.

The post “Hill House” and “Bly Manor” Star Kate Siegel Re-Teaming With Netflix for Horror Movie ‘Hypnotic’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The seven-episode series follows an isolated island community experiencing miraculous events – and frightening omens – after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest.

Deadline reports that Kate Siegel (“The Haunting of Hill House”) will star alongside Zach Gilford (The Purge: Anarchy) and Hamish Linklater (“Legion”).

The cast also includes Annabeth Gish (The Haunting of Hill House), Michael Trucco (Hunter Killer), Samantha Sloyan (Grey’s Anatomy), Henry Thomas (The Haunting of Hill House), Rahul Abburi (Killer Ransom), Crystal Balint (The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco), Matt Biedel (Altered Carbon), Alex Essoe (Doctor Sleep), Rahul Kohli (Supergirl), Kristin Lehman (The Chronicles of Riddick), Robert Longstreet (Doctor Sleep), Igby Rigney (Blue Bloods) and Annarah Shephard.

Interesting to note, the project has ties to both Hush and Gerald’s Game. “Midnight Mass” was the book Maddie Young wrote in Hush, and it later appeared in Gerald’s Game!

The upcoming series, it seems, is based on that fictional book.

The post Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas and More Join the Cast of Netflix and Mike Flanagan’s “Midnight Mass” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

While the episode is Doctor Sleep-centric, the crew was able to ask Flanagan about two major horror franchises that his name has been connected to, with the first being A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Last week, Bloody Disgusting exclusively told you that Wes Craven’s estate has opened the door to pitches that would resurrect A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger. Flanagan, who often chats with fans on Twitter (he uses IG to post photos of pizza, so give that a follow immediately), quickly raised his hand: “Put me in, coach… I’ve got a pitch!”

“The Boo Crew” asked Flanagan about the tweet, and while he (obviously) couldn’t elaborate, he did tease, “I got a killer idea.”

“Oh, it’s so good,” Siegel adds.

“[I’m] dying to get in there to pitch it,” Flanagan continues. “If I got to do this it would be so cool.”

Yeah, I know, not a lot of meat on the bone there, but fans of Flanagan (that’s me!) are beyond excited about the potential of the filmmaker heading down to Elm Street.

On a somewhat related note, Flanagan was once approached to direct Halloween, which would eventually be helmed by David Gordon Green. If you recall, Bloody Disgusting broke the news, but discussions never got beyond a single phone call that was more-or-less an open invitation.

“Jason Blum called me once and asked me that,” Flanagan reveals. “I tried to come up with a take for a minute when Blumhouse got Halloween.”

When asked what his Halloween would look like, Flanagan would explain.

“The answer to that is, I would do Hush. In a lot of ways, Hush is my Halloween.”

“I found my notes for that very brief period of time when I was trying to come up with a take on Halloween because Jason had said, ‘Hey, if you want to do this we can probably figure something out.’ I’m glad that I didn’t and so glad it did not come to me because the only note that I had scribbled over three days of brainstorming was ‘Dr. Loomis a woman?’ That’s as far as I got on Halloween.”

“They made the right call in not trusting the franchise to me,” he jokes. “In a lot of ways, Hush was my riff on the beautiful, simplicity, silence, tension, suspense that Halloween is. All of my love for Carpenter’s film is poured into that.”

“If Hush didn’t exist, and I was doing Halloween, it would look a lot like Hush.”

You can (and absolutely should) watch Hush on Netflix. As for A Nightmare on Elm Street, let’s all sit back and see how everything unfolds over the next few months.

You can listen to episode #85 of The Boo Crew below!

The post [Interview] Mike Flanagan is Dying to Pitch His “Killer Idea” for ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

A simple home invasion story done with style and skill, Hush may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s a great time and just might make you forget about the work week ahead.

Synopsis: Maddie is a deaf and mute author who has taken up a solitary life in an isolated home deep in the woods. When a masked killer appears at her window one night, there’s no one else in the area to help her fight for her life. It’s a brutal battle.

Key Players: Co-writer Kate Siegel stars as Maddie, and usual nice guy John Gallagher Jr. plays against type as the masked killer, “The Man.” Samantha Sloyan and Michael Trucco have small roles as Maddie’s only neighbors for miles.

Why It’s on the List: With Doctor Sleep mere weeks away from release and The Haunting of Bly Manor currently in production, it felt appropriate to celebrate at least one of the genre offerings Flanagan has delivered this decade (he’s been very busy). As a Netflix exclusive, Hush tends to be overshadowed by Flanagan’s more recent works; home invasion isn’t a subgenre for all, as it is. It’s a straightforward story, but with nail-biting tension, fantastic sound design, and visual flair that makes this cat and mouse thriller one that tends to leave you breathless. Gallagher Jr.’s turn as the villain is rightfully creepy, but Siegel’s fierce performance as Maddie makes you wonder why she’s not a bigger star. Bonus: Maddie’s cat!

Silence Can Be Killer: A small-scaled film with a tiny cast means a trailer could give a lot away, but luckily this one doesn’t.

Where You Can Watch: Hush is available to stream on Netflix.

The post [31 Days of Halloween] Day Twenty: Mike Flanagan’s Home Invasion Thriller ‘Hush’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Siegel played Theodora Crain in “The Haunting of Hill House.”

The new season is inspired by Henry James’ psychological gothic horror novella The Turn of the Screw.

“I already think it’s much scarier than season one,” Flanagan recently told Birth.Movies.Death.

The post “Hill House” Star Kate Siegel Joins the Cast of “The Haunting of Bly Manor” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Hosts Tim Timebomb, Trevor Shand, Lauren Shand, Rachel Tejada, Austin Wilkin and Leone D’Antonio deliver entertaining and smart horror discussions each week, and it’s all available now with a back catalog of episodes just waiting for you to tune-in.

Find The Boo Crew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I hope you all love the show as much as we do, and to introduce you to the The Boo Crew here are some of our favorite episodes so far…

Ep #32 – Elvira, Mistress of the Dark

Ep #27 – Danny Elfman (Composer, The Nightmare Before Christmas)

Ep #19 – Bill Moseley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1000 Corpses)

Ep #38 – Mick Garris (Masters of Horror, Amazing Stories)

Ep #55 – Pollyanna McIntosh (The Walking Dead, The Woman)

Ep #56 – Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Crawl)

Ep #35 – Kate Siegel (Haunting of Hill House / Hush)

There are so many more episodes waiting for you with guests like Seth Green, Juliette Lewis,  Chelsea Stardust, Darren Lynn Bousman, John 5 and more to come each week! Make sure to subscribe to The Boo Crew on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or find them wherever you get your podcasts.

Make sure you also follow The Boo Crew on Instagram and Twitter!

You can also listen to the whole Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network including CREEPY, SCP Archives and Horror Queers in the Bloody Disgusting Mobile App available for Android and iOS.

The post Meet ‘The Boo Crew’, part of the Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But if you think you know these characters, Flanagan has some surprises in store.

“It was important to us, with all the characters in the book, to try to take what we felt made them who they are and re-contextualize them somewhat,” Flanagan said. “One of the things about Theodora in the novel is she was a groundbreaking portrayal of a lesbian character at a time when that just wasn’t done. We wanted to honor that and lean even further into that side of her. With Eleanor, you’re going to see the same kind of fragility and strength and complexity that [author Shirley] Jackson imbued her with. She’s one of the most finely written characters in horror history I think. With us, it was how can we keep these notes of her and drop her into the modern world. It’s the same strategy with Luke. Dr. Montague is more of a fun cameo for us. It was more about taking all the pieces she had made so beautifully and trying to arrange them into something new.”

Supervising producer and co-writer Jeff Howard added, “The idea is this is a very famous haunted house and we’re dealing with a story that’s most likely after those famous events of the novel but the house has a reputation. And so rather than just have those exact characters show up, their names are borrowed but you want it to be fresh too. You want to tip your hat to the original source material and you want to be as true to the tone and the feel as possible, but you also want to be able to open it up for 10 hours and have a different experience that feels like it’s part of the same world.”

Ultimately, Flanagan is telling a different story about The Haunting of Hill House with inspiration from the book.

“It’s a very different story,” Flanagan said. “In the book, Hugh Crain as Shirley Jackson envisioned him was this religious fanatic… kind of dark, powerful, rich man whose wife was actually the first victim of the house. He built it for her and she died on the way to see it for the first time. Her carriage ran into a tree. The Crains as Shirley Jackson described them are way more like our Hill family. I really wanted to look at this more as a remix than a straight adaptation because I think Bob Wise did it perfectly back in 1963. There’s no real point trying to beat him at that game, and the story wouldn’t naturally fit into 10 hours. We were always trying to riff on it more than do a straight adaptation.”

The Haunting of Hill House bounces back and forth between the Crain children in the past and in the present as adults, something with which Flanagan and Howard have experience.

“Flanagan’s original intention was let’s tell a family story almost in the Oculus vein with the multiple timelines,” Howard said. “And, let’s tell a story about grief and tragedy and hopefully ultimately coming to accept that, but let’s do it in a way that totally fits Shirley Jackson’s tone and world.

“We spent a lot of time especially tailoring the scares so they would be in that Jackson spirit. There’s a couple I’m particularly proud of. The wiggling doorknob is a favorite.”

The Dudleys are also different. Portrayed as comic relief in previous adaptations, Mrs. Dudley is now a stern caretaker.

“I don’t think anybody wanted anything to be silly,” Howard said. “I think like all of the Flanagan films, there’s humanity in there and there’s real life and there’s a sense of hey, this family operates a lot like my own or I understand a lot of their experiences. Comic relief didn’t seem like anything that was really necessary for them. Plus, Annabeth Gish makes such a great different tone Mrs. Dudley that I can’t imagine her being used as a yokel to be made fun of.”

And now The Dudleys remain involved in Hill House antics.

“You didn’t really get to see what made them tick because they showed up to introduce the house and then say, ‘In the night in the dark’ and take off,” Flanagan said. “For us, that was another really great opportunity. There’s these wonderful characters who are so memorable but who are kind of blank slates. We can take them in whatever direction we would like. I just wanted to hear her say, ‘In the night in the dark’ and then after that she was all mine to do whatever we wanted.”

The Haunting of Hill House drops Friday, October 12 on Netflix.

The post You Don’t Know What You Think You Know About “The Haunting of Hill House” Characters [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Ahead of the October 12th release, Netflix is taking us behind-the-scenes of the filming, which focuses on how Flanagan directs “fear”. In such a short video, we learn more than a handful of reasons why Flanagan is one of the top directors in our space. Here, he talks about complex characters and the “ghosts” they carry from their past, as well as how he sustains tension (in an attempt to further the genre), and how he knows that modern filmmakers must “respect” the audience.

Danial Kurland reviewed the entire season and called it a “genuine masterpiece in long form horror storytelling.”

“The Haunting of Hill House” is a complex family drama wrapped in a chilling horror story…

“A modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson‘s iconic novel, “The Haunting of Hill House” explores a group of siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.  Now adults, and forced back together in the face of tragedy, the family must finally confront the ghosts of their past — some of which still lurk in their minds while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.”

Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel and Victoria Pedretti star, along with Lulu Wilson, McKenna Grace, Paxton Singleton, Violet McGraw and Julian Hilliard.

Trevor Macy serves as executive producer alongside Flanagan. Meredith Averill acts as co-showrunner and executive producer. Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank exec produce.

“The Haunting of Hill House” is produced for Netflix by Amblin TV and Paramount Television.

The 10-episode series hits Netflix on October 12.

The post Mike Flanagan on Sustaining Tension, Respecting the Audience with “The Haunting of Hill House” [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We also shared several first look images from the 10-episode series that’s directed by Mike Flanagan (Hush, Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Before I Wake, Gerald’s Game).

“A modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson‘s iconic novel, “The Haunting of Hill House” explores a group of siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.  Now adults, and forced back together in the face of tragedy, the family must finally confront the ghosts of their past — some of which still lurk in their minds while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.”

Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel and Victoria Pedretti star.

The post There Are Ghosts Hidden in Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” Photographs appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Now, Netflix quietly snuck a really cool teaser onto Twitter, which takes us on a tour of Hill House, a mansion that looks reminiscent of Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” attraction.

“A modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson‘s iconic novel, “The Haunting of Hill House” explores a group of siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.  Now adults, and forced back together in the face of tragedy, the family must finally confront the ghosts of their past — some of which still lurk in their minds while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.”

Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel and Victoria Pedretti star.

Don’t you want to come home? The Haunting of Hill House is only on Netflix October 12. pic.twitter.com/xqeLg7Of0E

— The Haunting of Hill House (@haunting) August 27, 2018

Our house is a pic.twitter.com/sTeh57NJ8Y

— The Haunting of Hill House (@haunting) August 26, 2018

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Bloody Disgusting just learned that Netflix is delivering tricks and treats this Halloween season when they open the doors to “The Haunting of Hill House” on Friday, October 12th!

Not only that, but we’ve scored the first ever look at the much-anticipated, 10-episode new series that’s directed by horror’s new BFF, Mike Flanagan (Hush, Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Before I Wake, Gerald’s Game).

Netflix says that “The Haunting of Hill House” is a complex family drama wrapped in a chilling horror story.

“A modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson‘s iconic novel, “The Haunting of Hill House” explores a group of siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.  Now adults, and forced back together in the face of tragedy, the family must finally confront the ghosts of their past — some of which still lurk in their minds while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.”

Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel and Victoria Pedretti star.

Trevor Macy serves as executive producer alongside Flanagan. Meredith Averill acts as co-showrunner and executive producer. Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank executive produce, as well. Lulu Wilson, McKenna Grace, Paxton Singleton, Violet McGraw and Julian Hilliard also star.

“The Haunting of Hill House” is produced for Netflix by Amblin TV and Paramount Television.

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Gish is coming off her role as Diane Gould in “Halt and Catch Fire” which recently wrapped its fourth and final season. She’ll also be reprising her role as Monica Reyes in the upcoming season of “The X-Files”, which premieres in January on Fox.

The Netflix version of “The Haunting of Hill House” draws from the original classic ghost story while expanding on the mythology of the Crane family. Gish will play Mrs. Dudley, but as with all the others, character details are being kept under wraps. She joins previously cast Carla Gugino, Michael Huisman, Timothy Hutton Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel and Henry Thomas.

The series hails from Mike Flanagan (Ouija: Origin of Evil, Oculus, Hush, Gerald’s Game), Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV and Paramount TV. Flanagan is writing and directing as well as executive producing alongside his producing partner, Trevor Macy, and Amblin TV’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.

The post “The X-Files” Alum Investigates “The Haunting of Hill House” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Based on Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel, the 10-episode straight-to-series re-imagining draws from the original classic ghost story while expanding on the mythology of the Crane family.

Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Michael Huisman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, McKenna Grace, and Violet McGraw have previously been announced as part of the cast.

Flanagan is an executive producer alongside his producing partner Trevor Macy as well as Amblin’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.

The post Two Children Enter “The Haunting Of Hill House” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The re-imagining draws from the original classic ghost story while expanding on the mythology of the Crane family.

Previously announced cast includes Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Michael Huisman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel and Henry Thomas.

Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game, Ouija: Origin of Evil) is at the helm of the 10-episode straight-to-series drama. He’ll also serve as executive producer alongside his producing partner Trevor Macy as well as Amblin’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.

The post ‘Amityville’ Child Now Spooked by Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

He joins Timothy Hutton, Carla Gugino, Michel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel and Henry Thomas in the 10-episode straight-to-series drama, which hails from genre filmmaker Mike Flanagan, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV and Paramount TV.

The Netflix version of “The Haunting of Hill House” draws from the original classic ghost story while expanding on the mythology of the Crane family.

Flanagan is writing and directing as well as executive producing alongside his producing partner Trevor Macy, and Amblin TV’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey.

The post Another Checks Into “The Haunting of Hill House” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Mike Flanagan, who has already impressed the hell out of me with his underrated Oculus as well as the frightening Netflix movie Hush, is behind Ouija: Origin of Evil, which takes the franchise is a completely different direction. And it looks awesome.

The sequel takes place in 1965 Los Angeles where a widowed mother and her two daughters add a new stunt to bolster their séance scam business and unwittingly invite authentic evil into their home. The youngest daughter is overtaken by the merciless spirit, forcing this small family to confront unthinkable fears to save her and send her possessor back to the other side.

The trailer is jam-packed with “what the fuck” moments that are quite impressive. The last time I saw a trailer that packed this much punch it was James Wan’s The Conjuring. I’m not saying the two are alike in any way, shape or form, but it’s a good sign when there’s more than one solid trailer “moment” for the stupid to share, especially this early.

[Related] Is Ouija An Anthology-style Franchise? (Exclusive)

Annalise Basso, Parker Mack (Divergent), Sam Anderson, Kate Siegel (Oculus), Doug Jones (Hellboy), Elizabeth Reaser, Henry Thomas, and Lulu Wilson star in the film, which comes from Universal Pictures, Platinum Dunes, Blumhouse Productions and Hasbro.

I’m saying “yes” to Ouija on October 21, 2016.

The post All Sorts of Cool Shit Happens in the ‘Ouija: Origin of Evil’ Trailer! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Last week we shared an in-depth piece in which Flanagan revealed the secret to creating authentic scares in a horror film.

Now, we talked to the filmmaker about Hush‘s inspirations, working with silence, as well as sound, and his thoughts on gore/violence in a slasher film.

They say movies are about “showing” a story, not “telling” one. With Hush, Flanagan wanted to challenge himself into making a film with little to no dialogue.

“I’d long wanted to do a film without dialog,” Flanagan explained in our exclusive interview. “It’s such a challenge. It forces you to tell a story strictly visually, and that’s a real blast. Kate [Siegel] and I were talking about how much suspense can be generated when the audience is aware of something that a protagonist is not, and how that played so well in movies like ‘Wait Until Dark.’ When we talked about having a deaf protagonist, we both thought it would provide some fantastic narrative opportunities for suspense.?

Sound is extremely important, especially in a movie about a blind woman. Hush had some of the best horror sound design I have ever heard, which was intricate in the impact of the slasher.

“Sound is crucial to the genre in general, but never more so for me than with this movie,” adds Flanagan. “We knew going in that sound would become its own character in this film. Typically, you want good sound design to help tell the story without calling attention to itself – in our case, it needed to call almost ALL of the attention to itself. It would be front and center for long stretches of the movie.

“It’s an incredibly complicated sound design,” he continues. “During production, the camera was almost always steadicam, which means that during takes you’d hear footsteps of the whole crew moving with Kate. You’d also hear me shouting out cues the whole time, because that was the only way to choreograph Kate, John, and the camera during takes. So all of our “ambient” sound had to be built again in post production.

“Then, our ‘silence’ also had to be built… you can’t actually just ‘pull sound out’ of a movie like this, even though that’s how I’ve heard it described. When we’re in Maddie’s perspective, we’re actually hearing a lot of complicated sounds that give us the IMPRESSION of silence. Otherwise, people wouldn’t actually be hearing silence… if we really pulled the sound out, they’d be hearing popcorn being munched, or phones vibrating, or their own shuffling in their seats. Or their house settling. We needed a soundscape that would cover all of those noises, but make you feel like “all the sound went away.

“It’s extraordinarily complex.”

Hush is a slasher, though, and while visuals and sound are key, it’s got to deliver the horror goods. Flanagan speaks to balancing violence and gore in a way that’s not exploitative, and focuses more on character than death and mayhem.

“I do not,” exclaimed Flanagan when we asked if he thinks gore and violence are a necessity in a slasher. “These are movies about the threat of violence, so the idea of it is present even before a drop of blood is spilled. There is only one act of violence in ‘The Strangers’ and it comes at the very, very end… the movie could have worked just as well if we didn’t see it, in my opinion.

“What you don’t want is for violence and gore to become more important than character and structure. A lot of slasher movies from the eighties were only focused on violence and gore, which robs the human beings in the story of any empathetic reaction from the audience, and instead makes them cheer for the gore. I’m not really into that kind of storytelling. I don’t think it appeals to our better natures, and I don’t think it makes filmmakers better storytellers.

“On the flip side, sometimes violence and gore can be used to make profound statements about human nature… I am still haunted by ‘Martyrs,’ which uses both to a degree that is truly art. So they can be used brilliantly, but are not necessary by any means.

Hush, now streaming on Netflix is a stunning and gorgeous piece of cinema that’s as thrilling and tense as they come. Kalyn reviewed the film, stating that “Silence is the most frightening tool of all,” while Trace explained that it’s “a fist-pumping female empowerment film while at the same time an incredibly suspenseful home invasion thriller.”

The post ‘Hush’ Director Mike Flanagan Talks Slasher Violence, Silence and…Sound appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After delivering the indie Absentia, the filmmaker exploded into the genre scene with his haunting Oculus, and currently has Before I Wake awaiting release, while he also is in post on a sequel to Ouija. While he’s targeting horror, at the moment, he’s touching various subgenres along the way.

Hush is a slasher film that’s getting rave reviews, especially by horror audiences. It’s violent and scary, but most notably is it’s quite beautiful. It’s not a coincidence that they go hand in hand.

In light of the film’s impact, we wanted to know how Flanagan creates a scare sequence. We talked with him a bit to learn the secrets behind the horrors of Hush, which begins with staging out scenes before they’re even added to the screenplay.

“[Star and co-writer] Kate [Siegel] and I would act out various scenarios at our house in Glendale, and if it felt real, we’d put it into the script,” Flanagan explains about the early process of the inner workings of a sequence.

But that’s just the beginning. Once Flanagan knows how the sequence can play out on set, he utilizes a lack of sound and specific blocking to activate the viewer’s imagination.

“I think it’s all about silence, imagination (both mine and the viewer’s), and waiting,” he tells us when asked about how to shoot a scare scene. “The moments of violence only have impact if they’re earned. A lot of times, people try to accomplish these things with loud noises and jump scares, which I think is lazy. There’s nothing special about startling someone – it’s an involuntary reflex, and it immediately diffuses tension. They scream, then they laugh, then they giggle for fifteen seconds. To me – and I’m not in the majority, I realize – that pattern is toxic to the genre.”

Flanagan goes on to explain why this style of filmmaking is toxic, which goes to the top of the Hollywood food chain.

“Audiences have grown to equate being startled with being scared, and will complain that a movie ‘isn’t scary enough’ if it doesn’t have enough jump scares… so that means that a lot of studios will insist on shoving jump scares into a movie, regardless of character or story structure, thinking it ‘makes it scarier.’ This fundamental miscommunication between the audience and the studios has resulted in a very unfortunate trend in horror, in my opinion.”

This is where Flanagan differentiates himself from other filmmakers. Here, he reveals his tricks for creating and sustaining tension, which comes from creative camerawork.

“For me it’s about creating and sustaining tension for as long as possible, and I’m not generally interested in allowing that tension to be deflated, especially by a jump scare,” Flanagan explains. “Sometimes you can’t avoid them, particularly if you want to make a movie that will be released wide, and that just makes me feel a little sad. But it is what it is…

“I think the far better approach is to work with the audience to create tension together. Give them enough ingredients to activate their imagination, and let them come along for the ride. Utilize negative space, darkness, and your camera to create opportunities for them to imagine (and thus fear) what COULD happen, as opposed to focusing entirely on what DOES. A viewer’s imagination is a powerful storyteller, and can often come up with things way more frightening than what you can explicitly show in a horror movie… try to engage that imagination, and the results can be magical.

“I’ve been surprised over the years to find that there are viewers out there who actively resent this approach, as if they’d prefer we leave their brains alone and let them have as passive an experience as possible… but hey, what can you do?”

Hush, now streaming on Netflix is a stunning and gorgeous piece of cinema that’s as thrilling and tense as they come. Kalyn reviewed the film, stating that “Silence is the most frightening tool of all,” while Trace explained that it’s “a fist-pumping female empowerment film while at the same time an incredibly suspenseful home invasion thriller.”

The post ‘Hush’ Director Mike Flanagan Reveals the Secret to Creating Authentic Scares In a Horror Movie! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The plot is simple: Author Maddie Young (Kate Siegel, Oculus) has lived a life of isolation since losing her hearing as a teenager to bacterial meningitis. Now a deaf-mute, she spends much of her time in her secluded home writing novels. When a masked psychotic killer (John Gallagher, Jr., 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Newsroom) shows up on her doorstep one night, Maddie must push herself beyond her mental and physical limits in order to survive the night.

Flanagan and Siegel co-wrote Hush, and the idea came to the husband and wife team over dinner. They wanted to make a home invasion thriller with a twist, and in that they succeeded. Think the final scene of Wait Until Dark stretched out to feature length. While this may sound like it could easily become tedious, the film utilizes each of its 87 minutes extremely well. There are a few too many moments of Maddie escaping the house only to be chased back inside by the killer, but by the time you begin to notice their frequency the film wraps up with a hefty amount of catharsis.

Hush makes a bold decision with its killer at the end of its first act, and it turns out to be a wise one. I won’t spoil it here, but suffice it to say that Gallagher is given much more to work with than your standard masked killer. The film shies away from giving him a backstory of any sort, giving the character (credited simply as “The Man”) the necessary menace needed to instill fear.

Siegel is an absolute revelation. If she’s this good while she’s silent I can’t wait to see what awaits us when she’s given actual dialogue to work with (she’s been acting since 2007 but to my knowledge this is her most high-profile role). She makes Maddie one of the best final girls seen in recent memory and boy, is she put through the wringer too. Her lack of dialogue in the film (save for one internal monologue) does not stop Siegel from giving one Hell of an impassioned performances.

Flanagan, as expected, plays with sound design a lot in the film, albeit not as much as you might expect. The sound in the film goes out at certain points, but one almost wishes Flanagan had used this technique more. Still, there hasn’t been a thriller that has played with a lack of dialogue this much since Joss Whedon used a similar approach in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (coincidentally also called “Hush”).

The film’s only real misstep comes in the form of the arrival of Maddie’s neighbor John (Michael Trucco), in a sequence that requires such a large suspension of disbelief as to how stupid the character is that it immediately takes you out of the film. There is also a dream sequence scare that had to have been included to pad the runtime. It feels cheap when it is held up next to the rest of the film.

The film is shot competently but not necessarily creatively. Cinematographer James Kniest shoots the house and the woods surrounding it with a good sense of claustrophobia, but I also watched Hush within 24 hours of Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe (my review), a similar thriller that is also set in one location and relies on a main character with a disability. That film was so beautifully shot and featured such masterful camerawork that Hush does seem a bit too simple (though the films would make an excellent double feature once Don’t Breathe is released in August). This is no fault of Hush, of course, but merely a coincidence that I thought I would mention.

The decision to release Hush on Netflix is a peculiar one. It’s not that the film will be any less effective; it will just be a different viewing experience. Watching Hush in a sold-out theater was one of the more fun theater-going experiences I’ve had in a while. The film practically demands to be viewed with an audience. That being said, watching it at home may have the benefit of highlighting the terror in the film. While incredibly suspenseful, at no point was I ever really scared during Hush. You may feel differently watching the film in the privacy of your own home.

Hush is a terrific film, and one that you will want to add to your Blu-Ray collection once it sees a release. Boasting some fantastic set pieces and performances from Siegel and Gallagher, it truly stands out among the crowd of horror films readily available on Netflix. I have no doubt that it will be added to many of those “hidden Netflix gems” posts in the near future. It’s so good, in fact, that it actually has me excited about what Flanagan will be doing with Ouija 2.

Hush is now available via Netflix streaming.

The post [Review] ‘Hush’ Makes the Most of Its Terrifying Premise appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

You can read my review of the film, which tells the story of a deaf-mute woman (Siegel) who is stalked by a psychotic killer (John Gallagher, Jr.) in her secluded home, when it goes up tomorrow (spoiler: I really liked it). You can also read Kalyn’s equally positive review from SXSW here.  

Bloody Disgusting: First of all, I really really liked the film a lot. I thought it was great and I like all of your films too.

Mike Flanagan: Thank you!  That’s amazing. Thank you.

BD: So I know the film is technically a home invasion thriller but there are obviously lots of aspects of slasher films in there.

Kate Siegel: Yeah.

BD: That’s my favorite sub-genre but–

Jason Blum: What is?

BD: Slasher.

Blum: Oh, slasher.

BD: I think it’s really nice to see a slasher get released today because I feel like that sub-genre has taken a backseat to a lot of other things, specifically supernatural horror and things like that. Do you think labelling something as a slasher film is akin to giving a film a death sentence in Hollywood? Or do you think it hurts your film.

Flanagan: Well when I hear “slasher” I think about the 80s. I think about Jason and Michael Myers. Horror is fascinating because it’s so seasonal and it’s like you’ve got these periods where slasher movies are in and it’s like everyone loves them. Next thing you know zombies are in. Then vampires are acceptable. It changes all the time and we bump into this all the time where we take a project out and someone says “Oh, that’s a zombie movie? That genre is dead.” Then The Walking Dead shows up. So I don’t really think there’s any label within horror that would be a death sentence because it’s like these sub-genres have their moments and they ebb and they flow and they resurge and they’re reinvented or they’re repackaged. Everything is so seasonal so I don’t think there’s any kind of corner of the genre that will ever really be hurting.

BD: I think comparisons to films like The Strangers or Them are inevitable.

Flanagan: Sure

BD: But making the lead character death….wait….deaf, is a nice twist on a tried-and-true formula that plays very well in the film without seeming like a gimmick. Where did that idea come from?

Flanagan: [looking at Siegel] Well we talked a lot but it kind of happened because Kate and I were out to dinner and we were talking about movies we liked. One of the ones that we stumbled on that we both really liked was Wait Until Dark. So we talked about that for a little bit and then talked about thrillers in general and the things that she had always wanted to do from an acting point of view and things that I had always wanted to do from a directing point of view.

Siegel: Right.

Flanagan: One of the things I had always wanted to try, which would be so challenging to me as a director, was to try something without dialogue. I coupled that with this idea that Kate was talking about a lot, which was the anxiety of seeing somebody try to get into your house. We thought that if we made the lead character deaf-mute then we would create the potential for really really fascinating version of these movies.

Siegel: At that dinner we were also discussing how the most scary aspect of the films we love was sound design. Sound design really sells a movie so we were discussing ways to make sound design more of a character on a script level. To really make sure that sound design is something that gets the weight it deserves. The opposite of that is to remove sound from the main character, since you have to balance that somewhere else in the movie. So sound design is something we really wanted to play with. I think that at the beginning Maddie being a deaf-mute was something that was more of a script challenge. Then as we started to meet this woman we realized  that it was a real benefit to character development, tension and things like that. We could do things that we couldn’t do if your character could speak or hear.

BD: Was there ever an intention to do the entire movie without sound?

Flanagan: It was a discussion, for sure. It very quickly became apparent that that wouldn’t work and the reason is that if you remove all sound, which sounds like this very cool experiment, you’re actually not doing that. You’re forcing everyone to listen to the sounds that are present in the room, which meant the audience isn’t going to be immersed in silence. They’re going to be listening to the audience. They’re going to be listening to popcorn and coughing and shuffling. There was this kind of realization very early where we said “Oh, if we actually remove sound then it would be impossible to build tension.” Modern audiences, having not grown up on silent films, are suddenly going to have to seek out every kind of audio stimulus anywhere else in the environment. Then I thought we wouldn’t even have people watching the movie at that point.

Siegel: They’d be frustrated with the guy next door.

Flanagan: Right! They’ll just be kind of hyper-aware. So that made us think about the parts of the movie that we wanted to pull the sound out and be in Maddie’s perspective, and that we couldn’t do that authentically silently. It was an impossible puzzle. How do we make it feel like there’s no sound while having enough sound to still get rid of all the other ambience and keep everybody focused?

Siegel: An interesting counterpoint to that was their decision to pull out all sound from the logos that open the film, you know? The Blumhouse logo appears and there’s absolutely no sound. It gets you very aware of your ears.

BD: And then that title card just booms on screen.

Flanagan: Yeah.That worked great.

BD: It does!

Trevor Macy: Well if you can sustain it. Those opening logos are about 45 seconds without sound and you start to wonder if something is wrong with the film.

BD: That actually went through my head while I was watching the film. 

Macy: Yeah, you think the sound is broken, which I think is so cool.

Siegel: It makes you think about sound from the very beginning.

BD: It’s a very interesting technique. You know, I saw Don’t Breathe Friday night which also uses silence to a considerable degree and there’s a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode–

Siegel and Flanagan together: “Hush!”

Siegel: Which we watch and love.

BD: Yes! It’s one of the best episodes of that show in one of the worst seasons. 

Flanagan: Yeah that’s true. You’re totally right. The whole Riley thing…..yeah. Anyway, yeah, um….yeah.

BD: So with that technique, I’m assuming the film did pose some challenges. [Looking at Siegel] You kind of get put through the wringer.

Macy: And she wrote it!

BD: I know! Did you know you were going to play that part when you were writing it?

Siegel: Yes, [looks at Blum and Macy] well I hoped that they would say yes.

Flanagan: That was the intention pending convincing everyone to do it.

Blum: Obviously, we said yes.

BD: Well I think watching actors and actresses do difficult stunts is really interesting, so was there a particular scene that you were having a rough time with physically.

Siegel: It’s interesting, but I was adamant about doing my own stunts from the beginning because I think I didn’t realize what that actually entailed. I thought it sounded fun because I hadn’t really gone through the whole thing before. There were two things that were rough. One was our amazing stunt coordinator Chuck Borden helped with was the door slam. I had to get my hand slammed in the door multiple times from multiple angles. I thought it meant “Oh I’ll be fine I won’t hurt at all.” No, it just means they safely slam your hand in a door.

Flanagan: So it won’t break anything, basically.

Siegel: Right, but they still need to slam your hand in the door. So what happened after Take 12 or 13 was that I would start flinching before the slam and that just couldn’t happen. We had shot pretty much in order so by that time I had already been through a lot of stuff. I was jumping out of windows, climbing on the roof with a harness and a lot of other things had happened. So I remember a point after some skin accidentally got pinched during the door slam I just went “That’s it! I’m done. We’ve got it!” I took my hand away and Mike’s deep, deep love of actors came in and he was like “Please know that you’re in the right place right now. This is exactly right. This is your talent coming out. Please can we just try this again?” So I tried it one more time and I think that’s the take we ended up using. It was just hard to stay in that place with Maddie because you have to have this deep level of focus since she can’t hear anything so as an actor I was constantly trying to touch things. That’s what my coach was telling me: when you lose the sense of hearing you want to ground yourself in the vibrations that are happening. So Maddie was so frustrated with her situation that my actual frustration with the stunt was the character coming out.

Flanagan: There’s some priceless pictures of her with the shattered, broken hand trying to eat lunch.

Siegel: Well ‘cuz they had tied my hand back!

BD: That’s a really hard thing to look at too. I mean it’s probably the last 20 minutes you’re watching her with this hand that’s been destroyed.

Flanagan: Yeah and two of her fingers were taped down underneath the application and she had to wear it for 12 hours.

Siegel: Plus the three hours to get into it and two hours to get out of it.

Flanagan: And this is toward the end of the shoot so everybody was exhausted, but she didn’t have the use of her dominant hand for the entire day. And she couldn’t take the application off so she was just stuck in it. She had to eat with it and get ready and check herself with it and she also liked to come up behind me and shove the prosthetic pinky into my ear when I wasn’t looking.

Flanagan: That freaked me out.

Siegel: The whole thing was just Cloud Nine. So here my hand was being slammed in a door but it was like the best way that could ever happen.

BD: If I was ever in a horror movie I would want to die in a really gruesome way but I hate being sticky so I don’t like the idea of having blood on me all the time.

Flanagan: Oh the sticky blood is nasty.

Siegel: It is sticky. Oh you’ve got me right back there. Sticky is the worst. If you ever get a chance to talk to [actor/actress name deleted for the sake of spoilers] about sticky…

Flanagan: Oh God.

Macy: By the way, he/she didn’t have to. He/she sat there all day to be dead on the ground even though we offered him/her a stand-in.

Flanagan: He/she was just like “No! I’m doing it!” Like it was a challenge to overcome.

BD: Something that irks me about horror criticism is that people like to say “Oh, it’s violence against women” or “Horror hates women.” I do think that what happens to the women in Hush is more brutal than what happens to the men. But Kate, from your standpoint, how do you feel about that? I feel like that trait is inherent of the genre, but that criticism is something I feel is thrown around a lot.

Siegel: Yeah, first thing is that I really like that people are sensitive to that. I have at times fallen on that side of the argument where I’m like “How many girls need to run into the woods in their underpants?” The answer is many.

Siegel: You bring up Wait Until Dark, but what we really loved was Die Hard. So I didn’t think of Maddie as a girl running in the woods in her underpants. I thought of her as an action hero, and what we love about Die Hard is that our main character is beat to Hell! His teeth are bloody, the whole building is used and he’s vulnerable, but he’s a warrior. So I think that with Maddie, there was never an iota of intention to do anything with sexual violence or rape.

Flanagan: Yeah we did not want to go there at all.

Siegel: But I actually think if you switch the genders you can keep all of the story points. Nothing happens to Maddie because she’s a woman and she doesn’t choose anything because she’s a woman. We could neutralize gender in this movie and you would have the exact same movie. That to me was very important and I wanted to make sure that my female friendship with Samantha [Sloyan, who plays Sarah in the film] wasn’t about about boys. It was about reading a book and talking about books. I wanted to make sure the relationship between the sisters was familial and didn’t need to be girly and giggly. I had a strong eye on that most of the time. A lot of this movie is, with a risk of putting too much into it, a metaphor for feeling unheard. It’s a movie about asserting yourself and of course as a female writer I brought a lot to that.

Macy: I also think if you look at his filmography that he’s pretty equal opportunity.

BD: Oh, absolutely.

Siegel: Mostly children.

Macy: Kids.

Flanagan: Yeah the ones I keep putting in the crosshairs are the kids, but I tend to think that there’s no person who is more or less acceptable to be treated violently than another. Within the genre I think it should be just as horrifying if the victim of violence is a man as opposed to a woman. Although I do think there’s a special kind of discomfort that comes when it’s a child. That puts me in a place of intense discomfort.

Macy: It’s more special if it’s a child.

Flanagan: Or a dog. People go nuts when you try to kill a dog.

Blum: Across the board, people are much more upset about killing a dog as opposed to killing a person.

Macy: Yeah I wouldn’t let him kill the dog in Oculus.

BD: I thought you were going to kill that dog, too. I also though you would kill the cat in Hush.

Blum: Cats are okay. People don’t care as much about cats.

Flanagan: That was the other point we had made. We knew people would be upset if it was a dog but a cat, people would be like “Whatever.”

BD: I think I’m getting the cue to wrap up, so I’ll ask my last question. I think the film plays very well with an audience and will play very differently at home on Netflix. The more I thought about it the more I thought if I was was watching it home alone it may not be as much of a “cheering” movie than I thought it was —

Flanagan: It will be a “hold your breath” kind of movie.

BD: Yes.

Flanagan: I wish we could put a card up in front of it ahead of the Netflix thing that tells you to turn the volume up. Something like “The producers humbly request that you turn the volume up and turn off the light.” Home is where we’re meant to feel the safest, so it’s kind of a great place to interfere with.

Macy: I mean I would hate to watch The Strangers at home by myself.

Flanagan: Yeah sitting at home alone watching this, sooner or later you’re going to look at the window.

BD: My last little thing, and it’s totally unrelated to Hush, but I know that you have been linked to I Know What You Did Last Summer in the past.

Flanagan: Yes.

BD: Is that still happening? 

Flanagan: My connection to that was strictly writing. We delivered a script to Sony.

BD: Alright, so a script exists?

Flanagan: Oh, yeah. Like fifteen drafts of that script exist. From what I understand with where that project is, is that the producers and the studio were thrilled with the script and they were just getting started trying to figure out how to proceed with it.

Siegel: And finding so many children to murder.

Flanagan: [jokingly] Yeah it’s just killing kids. The whole thing. But that one was always me and Jeff Howard, who have written together so much. It was always just a writing job that we were thrilled to have but there’s never been any conversation about me directing.

BD: I grew up with that book and the movie so I’ve got a special place in my heart for that one. 

After the interview, the group showed me a clip from Ouija 2, which Flanagan directed. While I’m not able to give any specifics about the scene that I saw, I can say that it looks promising. Of course, the bar wasn’t set very high with the first Ouija, but with a man like Flanagan behind the lens, I’m confident it will at least turn out decent.

The post [Interview] ‘Hush’ Director Mike Flanagan and Actress Kate Siegel On Their New Thriller! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In Hush, World Premiering at the SXSW Film Festival this weekend, a deaf woman is stalked by a psychotic killer in her secluded home.

We shared the trailer yesterday (above), and now Bloody Disgusting has your exclusive first look at the official one-sheet for the film, which will be released globally on Netflix beginning April 8th.

Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr, Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan star in Hush, the latest from Oculus director Mike Flanagan.

In Hush, “Author Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) lives a life of utter isolation after losing her hearing as a teenager. She’s retreated form society, living in seclusion and existing in a completely silent world. But one night, the fragile world is shattered when the masked face of a psychotic killer appears in her window. Without another living soul for miles, and with no way to call for help, it appears that Maddie is at the killer’s mercy… but he may have underestimated his prey. As this horrifying game of cat and mouse escalates to a breathless fever-pitch, Maddie must push herself beyond her mental and physical limits in order to survive the night.“

The post ‘Hush’ Poster Peaks In From the Outside (Exclusive) appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Netflix has now released the official trailer for the latest from Oculus director Mike Flanagan, which will be released globally on the streaming service beginning April 8th.

Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr, Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan star in Hush, which looks like another spin on Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s You’re Next, only Hush pits this killer one on one with his/her victim.

“Author Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) lives a life of utter isolation after losing her hearing as a teenager. She’s retreated form society, living in seclusion and existing in a completely silent world. But one night, the fragile world is shattered when the masked face of a psychotic killer appears in her window. Without another living soul for miles, and with no way to call for help, it appears that Maddie is at the killer’s mercy… but he may have underestimated his prey. As this horrifying game of cat and mouse escalates to a breathless fever-pitch, Maddie must push herself beyond her mental and physical limits in order to survive the night.“

The post The ‘Hush’ Trailer Is Coming From Right Outside the Secluded Cabin appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It was announced today that Netflix has acquired the film, from Oculus director Mike Flanagan, and will release it globally on the streaming service beginning April 8th.

“After losing her hearing as a teenager, author Maddie Young (Siegel) has lived a life of isolation fully retreating into her now silent world. When the masked face of a psychotic killer appears in the window of her secluded home, she must push herself beyond her mental and physical limits in order to survive the night.”

Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr, Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloyan star in Hush, which should have a trailer soon.

Watch for our review out of the festival.

The post ‘Hush’: Netflix Will Release ‘Oculus’ Director’s Next In April! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.