Movies
Trailer for ‘I Trapped the Devil’ is a Christmastime Nightmare
IFC Midnight has just released the official trailer for Josh Lobo’s excellent indie debut I Trapped the Devil, which will release in limited theaters and on VOD platforms April 26, 2019.
Starring AJ Bowen (You’re Next, A Horrible Way to Die, The Signal), Jocelin Donahue (House of the Devil), Chris Sullivan (Stranger Things), Scott Poythress (The Signal), and Susan Burke (Southbound), the Christmas-set psychological horror focuses on a man’s descent into paranoia, after he traps what he believes to be the devil in his basement. The film reminds me of the classic “Twilight Zone” episode “The Howling Man”, which you’ll get a glimpse of in the trailer.
“Christmas is supposed to be a time for peace and joyful family reunions. But when Matt (Bowen) and his wife Karen (Burke) show up unannounced at the home of his estranged brother Steve (Poythress) to celebrate the holidays, they are instead greeted with a horrifying surprise: trapped in the basement is a man. But not just any man. Steve believes that his hostage is none other than the devil himself. As shock and skepticism turn to fear and paranoia, Matt and Karen find themselves facing a terrifying quandary: is Steve dangerously unhinged? Or could the mysterious stranger really be evil incarnate? Either way, the stage is set for a true Christmas from hell.”
Lobo produced alongside Spence Nicholson, Rowan Russell and Scott Weinberg.
While the film opens in theaters and on VOD on April 26th, those who wish to see it prior to opening can screen it at the Chattanooga Film Festival, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, Motor City Nightmares, and the Phoenix Film Festival.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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