When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water

THE FUTURE IS PRIME

Disappointed by the lack of reference to Alexa. Seriously, though, Prime's Blade Runner 2099 looks magnificent.

Exorcist Sequels Are Now Legion

Following last week's phenomenal adaptation - and updating to the digital age - of Carrie, Mike Flanagan is continuing his reign as the king of modern horror with his addition to The Exorcist mythos, with what appears to be a sequel to The Exorcist III: Legion, with The Exorcist: Martyrs.

Academy Award nominee Scarlett Johansson fronts The Exorcist: Martyrs, an unsettling new chapter in one of the most storied titles in cinema history from genre auteur Mike Flanagan, the creator of acclaimed series The Haunting of Hill House, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Midnight Mass as well as the films Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck, Hush and Gerald’s Game.

Thirteen years ago, New York City detective Julie Miller (Johansson) ended the terror reign of satanic serial killer Father Sunday. The case made her a hero, and she has thrown herself into her work ever since. Now a new killer scrawls her name in an altar boy’s blood on the walls of a church crypt, dragging her back into the darkness she believed she had buried with him.

Aided by former prison chaplain Father William (Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor), who heard Father Sunday’s final confession, and sharp rookie detective Gina Restrepo (Sasha Calle, The Rip), Detective Miller will discover a filament linking a lineage of serial killers, from H.H. Holmes to the Zodiac, that could corrupt everything, and everyone, she loves with an evil that goes well beyond the mortal.

The top-flight cast includes Academy Award nominee Diane Lane as Mary, Detective Miller’s mother, who has moved in with her to help raise her grandson Max (Jacobi Jupe, Hamnet); Actor Award winner Scoot McNairy (Argo) as paroled convict Clay Silver; Emmy winner Gil Bellows (Carrie) as Peter Nicks, a former acolyte of Father Sunday; Emmy and Tony winning screen legend Laurence Fishburne as revered priest Father Nichol; and acclaimed star of The Odyssey, Emmy and Special Tony Award winner John Leguizamo, in the most menacing role of his career as Father Sunday.

The Exorcist: Martyrs is written and directed by Mike Flanagan, based on characters created by William Peter Blatty.

Underrated B-Movie Monsters From The 1950s

The 1950s gave us some of the greatest monster movies ever made, but plenty of incredible creature features have been forgotten over the years. From giant scorpions and telepathic crabs to reptilian mutants and towering robot monsters, these are 10 underrated 1950s monster movies that deserve another look.

This is an incredible list from the SirBootis Flicks channel, overflowing with glorious, old school monsters in an array of largely forgotten creature features.

Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary opens with the death notice, then funeral, of grandmother Ellen Taper Leigh.

Initially, the story then revolves around the reactions of her surviving family to this loss: emotional artist daughter Annie (Toni Collette), who crafts miniature dioramas; Annie's matter-of-fact husband, Steve (Gabrielle Bryne); and their teenage children, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), who becomes rather death-obsessed after her gran's passing, and Peter (Alex Wolff), who just wants to smoke weed and hang with his mates.

Coming from a family with a history of mental illness, Annie didn't really get on with her mum, but loved her nonetheless.

But if that wasn't enough grief, an unexpected tragic accident leaves the family in a state of traumatised shock, with Annie eventually turning to a friend she makes at grief counselling, Joan (the incredible Ann Dowd, of The Leftovers and The Handmaid's Tale), for comfort and guidance.

Joan tells Annie about a spiritualist ritual for contacting the dead, and that's when the weird stuff really truly begins.

Hereditary is difficult to get into at first, because writer/director Ari Aster wants to keep his audience on the back-foot, so they're not trying to second-guess the story.

What starts as a shocking family drama, swerves into almost mainstream horror territory with some seemingly ghostly goings-on, before taking a left turn into Lovecraftian territory, and finally plunging headlong into the WTF zone!

If you surrender yourself to this film, and can stay off your mobile phone for just over two hours, you will be rewarded with an intense experience that, while not wholly original, is made so well it will remind you of true genre classics like The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary's Baby etc

This is smart horror, not jump scares; this is things moving in your peripheral vision, strange sounds and odd reflections.

Because of Annie's mental health issues, the film constantly flirts with the unreliable narrator trope: is what we are seeing really happening or is it a hallucination?

This, of course, also works to keep the audience fixated on what's occurring onscreen, and also off-balance because we are constantly questioning the goings-on unfolding before our eyes.

The disorientating and surreal atmosphere is accentuated by some sudden jump cuts and other camera trickery. Clearly the director has a very particular vision in mind and goes to great lengths to sell it to his audience.

While there is death and all that entails, this isn't a film for gorehounds, but that makes the shocks more powerful and personal, as you're not desensitised by buckets of blood.

The central characters behave (almost, within the limits of a cinematic world) like real human beings, (a pleasant change for the genre); when exposed to the apparent supernatural they don't take it in their stride, there's panic, tears, and denial.

I also suspect the film will require repeat viewing to pick up on all the clues that lay the groundwork for the bizarre finale.

Unfortunately, a couple of moments strain credibility somewhat: the shocking accident I referred to never appears to be investigated by the police and then, later on, Peter is badly hurt when he has a "fit" at school, but - although he gets a splint for his broken nose (presumably from the school nurse) - it's never even suggested that he should go to hospital, and, given what a dramatic incident it is, that seems rather peculiar.

Both of these flaws are clearly there to serve the narrative - as letting reality intrude too heavily could have derailed the story in major ways - which is a shame, because the rest of the film is magnificent.

Despite its seemingly slow start, by the third act I was so sucked in that I wanted at least another half-hour of the Hereditary madness.

Unlike the bulk of genre movies pumped out these days, Hereditary is not disposable fare to be forgotten within an hour of switching off the television or walking out of the cinema.

There's every possibility this will get under your skin and haunt your dreams.

Which I reckon is good value for money.