[Kill of the Week] Shotgun Blast to the Face in ‘Punisher: War Zone’
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Every week, we spotlight a kill that we just can’t get enough of. This is Kill of the Week.
Naturally, the majority of movies that we feature in this segment are horror movies, but every so often a non-horror movie comes along and, well, outdoes most horror movies in the gore department. Punisher: War Zone, directed by Lexi Alexander and released in 2008, is damn sure one of those movies.
Before Jon Bernthal took over the role of Frank Castle in Netflix’s “Daredevil” and now standalone series “The Punisher,” which just debuted its first season today, the character was played by a handful of different actors. Dolph Lundgren first brought Castle to the screen in 1989’s The Punisher, followed by Thomas Jane in 2004’s The Punisher.
But nobody embodied the sheer badassery of the iconic comic book character better than Ray Stevenson, who starred as the vengeful vigilante in Punisher: War Zone.
The body count is insanely high in War Zone, with 100 people losing their lives across the film’s 103 minutes. Stevenson’s Castle goes through bad guys like Jason Voorhees, shooting, blowing up, punching and impaling a seemingly endless array of unlucky victims; the gore approaches Story of Ricky levels, and that’s no exaggeration.
The standout scene of brutality in Punisher: War Zone? Castle and a Special Agent corner a mobster in his home. Guns pointed at him, the agent plans on calling the capture in so the man can be arrested proper. Castle has other plans, however, blasting the mobster’s face clean off with a close-range shotgun blast.
All this while holding a child in his arms. God. Damn.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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