Latest news with #horrorMovies
Washington Post
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Foster mom fosters nightmares in ‘Bring Her Back'
What's the opposite of a Venn diagram overlap? Whatever it is, 'Bring Her Back' is the film equivalent, with two potential audiences that might cancel each other out. Fans of horror movies that work your every last nerve may not appreciate the casting of the great British actress Sally Hawkins as a foster parent with a devilish agenda. By contrast, fans of Hawkins's work in art-house crowd-pleasers like 'Maudie' and 'Happy-Go-Lucky' — or even mainstream fare like 'The Shape of Water' and the first two 'Paddington' movies — may run screaming from the theater.
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Bring Her Back' Review: A Foster Mother Like No Other
We ask a lot from our horror movies, which is perhaps the main reason they can be so divisive, and so difficult to get right. We want them to shock, but not traumatize; to disgust, but not sicken; to creep us out, but not bequeath a month's worth of nightmares. On top of all that, can we please have some jokes? Instead of stressing over these pressures, some genre filmmakers, a number of them women, are determinedly carving their own idiosyncratic paths. Among these are the Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, who have followed their wonderfully disquieting debut feature, 'Talk to Me' (2023), with another three-word imperative, 'Bring Her Back.' The two movies have more in common than their titular grammar: Both draw sustenance and momentum from familial grief, and both exhibit an extraordinary sensitivity toward their emotionally flayed central characters. When we meet Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger stepsister, Piper (Sora Wong), Andy's father has just died and the siblings must be fostered for three months until Andy can assume guardianship of Piper, who is legally blind. At first, their temporary foster mother, Laura (a delicious Sally Hawkins), seems welcoming, if a little dippy, her somewhat rundown property boasting a taxidermied pup, a mysterious chalk circle and a strange little boy who is mute and near-feral. His name is Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips, incredible) and I could write several paragraphs just on what he puts in his mouth. Suffice to say that, during one horrifying episode, I didn't exhale until it was over. Even so, the movie's forceful visual shocks (executed mostly with practical effects) are easier to bear than its restlessly mounting anguish. Though more logically muddled than its predecessor, 'Bring Her Back' operates from a core of tragedy whose weight offsets the nebulousness of the plot. Why is Laura, who recently lost her own daughter, so determined to drive a wedge between Piper and her fondly protective stepbrother? Why is she mesmerized by grainy camcorder footage of what appears to be a bloody satanic ritual? Why must Ollie be kept locked in his room and apparently starved? Answers will arrive, after a fashion, but they don't matter as much as they should in a movie with such sublime lead performances. Hawkins knows exactly how to play Laura's cheery psychopathy and cunning cruelties, and Wong, in her first film role, gives Piper a spirited independence. But it's Barratt, with his angelic features and soulful authenticity, who makes Andy the film's gently gaping wound. Barratt was barely a teenager when he appeared in the smashing Apple TV+ show 'Invasion' (2021-25), but his talent was undeniable, and the Philippous, working once again with the brilliant cinematographer Aaron McLisky, understand perfectly how to film him for maximum hurt. Supernatural fidgeting aside, 'Bring Her Back' doubles down on its predecessor's willingness to punish the innocent. I'm beginning to think that the Philippous don't just want to shatter our nerves: They want to break our hearts.
Fast Company
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
We're in a golden age for movie trailers—and it's messing with our heads
Deciding which movies warrant a trip to the theater isn't always easy. Lately, though, trailers seem to be making the choice even harder, and not for the reasons one might think. The problem—if you could call it one—is an abundance of marketing riches across the entire cinematic spectrum. The trailer for A24's new necromancy horror Bring Her Back is as dynamic as the one for Marvel's retro romp, The Fantastic Four, not to mention DC's new Superman reboot, Liam Neeson's revival of The Naked Gun, and pretty much every other tentpole this year. Either the best summer movie season in decades is about to sweep through theaters or (more likely) trailers have simply gotten crazy good now, and it's breaking our brains. Even the trailers themselves seem to be aware that movie marketing is firing on all cylinders lately. The one for A24's just-released Friendship ends with Tim Robinson, creator of cringetastic meme factory I Think You Should Leave, saying direct-to-camera, 'There's a new Marvel out that's supposed to be nuts.' It's a nod to his film's status as counterprogramming for the Marvel blockbuster, Thunderbolts, which also arrived this month. After the Friendship trailer debuted in February, though, Marvel dropped a Thunderbolts trailer touting its cast's connections to past A24 movies—like a metatextual slap-fight between Goliath and Indie Goliath. Both sides win. The Friendship trailer quickly conveys how the unique tone of Robinson's show will translate to film, while Thunderbolts' trailers present it as an off-beat, low stakes side-quest in the Marvel world. How could anyone who's even a little interested in either resist? Traditionally, trailers have followed a familiar cadence: Give the audience a hook, follow it up with some table-setting, and end on an escalation. But these days, trailers feel more like a self-contained mini-movie than part of a pattern. Some trailers, like those for Superman and Final Destination: Bloodlines, spend a full minute anchored by a single tense scene that lures viewers in; others, like those for the latest Mission: Impossible and Conjuring movies, dangle visuals from previous entries in clever ways, centering franchise lore to remind audiences what they loved about the characters and worlds in the first place. So how are trailer editors deciding which path to take? And how do they keep things from feeling stale? According to Erika Anaya, creative director at leading entertainment marketing agency Trailer Park, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to charting a trailer's trajectory. 'It's different for every single movie, regardless of genre or studio,' she says. 'I would even say for something like a Marvel [film], you would think, 'Oh, they pretty much have it down now,' but it changes for every single one.' The promotional push for a major movie generally includes a teaser trailer and two official trailers. (These days movies also often feature an assortment of online-only bonus clips.) The composition of these packages used to be more codified, though. A teaser was once strictly an enticing, elusive introduction—more TikTok-length than YouTube. A classic example is the teaser for The Shining, which showed nothing but a nightmarish deluge of blood pouring out from a hotel elevator. While those kinds of teasers still exist—the new Naked Gun offers one extended gag—teasers can now be more comprehensive than trailers. The 'teaser' for Thunderbolts lasted nearly three and a half minutes, giving viewers a lot to chew in for a first taste. 'It used to be very common for the first piece out of the gate to be an amuse-bouche teaser, followed by a second trailer that leaned more heavily into story,' Anaya says. 'But that's not really a standard practice anymore.' Whatever their length or style, movie trailers sound better now, too. Or at least fresher. The era of slowed-down cover songs, starting with 2010's The Social Network trailer and its haunting choral cover of Radiohead's 'Creep,' finally seems to have tapered off. Now, studios are more likely to score a trailer with a bizarro version of a classic rock song that features new instrumentation alongside the classic vocal stems. This summer's entries include a lithe EDM update of Madonna's 'Material Girl' for A24's The Materialists, a dreamy twist on Queen's 'Under Pressure' in Thunderbolts, and an enhanced take on 'Happy Together' by The Turtles for Neon's horror flick Together. The infamous 'braaam' noise popularized by the Inception trailer is also on the wane. An audio shorthand for epicness, the oft-used trailer sound appears to have fallen out of fashion somewhere between 2021's Dune and last year's Dune 2. ('I think a lot of trailer editors—and viewers—got tired of that particular sound effect,' Anaya adds.) What might distinguish this season's trailers most, though, is an intuitive command of how much to reveal and how much to hold back. While giving a flavor of a movie's vibe can be just as important to a trailer as communicating the plot or flaunting some money-shot stunts, jokes, smooches, or death-traps, the amounts in each recipe are always in flux. The trailer for 2006's cerebral drama, Little Children, starring Kate Winslet, is a tonal masterpiece that barely informs viewers what the film is actually about or what happens in it. A24 essentially cornered the market on this style of trailer in the 2010's, with vibey, vague pieces like those for The Witch and Hereditary, and the studio's trailer for Bring Her Back this summer takes a similar tact. Viewers will leave knowing only that the titular 'Back' means 'back from the dead'—and feeling supremely creeped out. So, how do studios decide how much to give away in a trailer? According to Anaya, big-budget films often go through multiple rounds of audience testing for their trailers—and the more the creators lean on that research, the more they tend to reveal. Ironically, the same viewers who later complain in YouTube comments about 'spoiler-filled' trailers may be the ones asking for more upfront during test screenings. But lately, the trend seems to be swinging the other way. 'A few years ago, it was more common to add more story, but I think there is a sense that we wanna leave something more, particularly for theatrical, for people to go and buy a ticket,' Anaya says. 'So maybe that more old-school way of packing a trailer with too much information is starting to look like, 'Is there a better way to do this?' Can we intrigue them with less narrative, but enough to come through?' Neon's trailer for the upcoming Together, for instance, is a triumph of the delicate balance between vibes, plot, and money shots. It gives viewers just enough string to put together that stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco are a troubled couple thrust into a gnarly body-horror situation, without quite spelling out what that situation is, let alone what started it or how far it will go. Rather than a standout, though, this is starting to feel like the standard. This summer's trailers seem to be finding the precise middle between the magic of mystery and the dopamine rush of Too Much—and it's getting confusing. Every trailer seems to pitch its product with a beautiful line drive right down the plate, but the movies themselves can't all be home runs. Will some of the moody, plot-light trailers ultimately translate to plodding, plot-free films? Will any of those that confidently reveal some of their best moments turn out to have held back nothing for the actual film? Judging by the solid start to the summer box office, these trailers are successfully making people flee their homes to find out.
Fox News
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Marlon Wayans vows to be an 'equal-opportunity offender' in 'Scary Movie' comeback
FIRST ON FOX: When Marlon Wayans announced that a new "Scary Movie" was being made, fans were thrilled yet nervous that the franchise would lose the edginess it had in the early 2000s. Wayans quickly put those fears to rest in a new interview. The "Scary Movie" films are politically incorrect parodies of some of the most iconic horror movies in recent years. The likes of "Scream," "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "The Ring" were a few brutally skewered by the "Scary Movie" cast. The films featured disability humor, jokes about race, body image and much more. Wayans, who played Shorty Meeks in the first "Scary Movie" and its 2001 sequel, was pumped about the series returning. "After nearly 20 years, the Wayans brothers are finally going to give the fans what they've been asking for… a return to the SCARY MOVIE franchise!" he wrote on X in the announcement last October. "We're looking forward to having fun on the big screen again." "Please don't go woke," was the common refrain from fans cautiously excited about the franchise returning. No need to fret, according to Wayans. "Well the Wayans, we were always woke-ish," Wayans told Fox News Digital. "You have to pull from woke because that means you're aware, right? And you have, but you have to be an equal-opportunity offender and you gotta be, you know, you gotta explore both sides. So for us, I'm not taking a side or taking a side of comedy. So I don't even know what woke means." He analyzed the rest of his comedic work in the context of wokeness. "You know, if you call 'In Living Color' a woke show, but it was absolutely hilarious," he continued. "'White Chicks' was kind of a woke movie, but it was absolutely hilarious. We take these things and we go – 'Don't Be A Menace' was a very woke movie. But when it comes to humor, it's not about woke. It's about you explore the woke to find the humor, just as the way you explore the blind to find the humor. You know, there's humor everywhere. And I think they're saying, don't be PG or PC. You know, there's no holds barred. Take your gloves off and F us up. That's what we're gonna do. Everybody gets it." As for what recent horror movies he's hoping to poke fun at in the next "Scary Movie," Wayans said, "Everything's on the table." And he said there's plenty of solid material to pick from. "Especially when it comes to horror, there's been a – that genre has been flourishing," he said. "I think you know I feel like the synapse that we're having, we're about to enter a whole new era, you know, the platinum era of filmmaking. I think when things die down, is because you know you need to find that new well of creativity and that new up-and-coming talent and the old talent that has new ideas that knows how to execute. And they just bring it to a whole 'nother level and that's what I'm looking forward to, man." The actor said he's hoping to have some good news for fans wanting to see the original cast back in action. "You know, we're trying to bring the band back together," he responded. "We'll see. I can't make no promises. But, you know, if we've talked to everybody we're looking to have a nice, fun, 'Scary' reunion." The Wayans' family's "no holds barred" humor was evident in another early 2000s classic, "White Chicks." While Marlon noted that people have tried to "cancel" him and his brother Shawn for years for starring in the film, he challenged those critics by pointing out which demographic most enjoyed the movie. "Every time we bring a Wayans project, we're always gonna have that flavor," he told Fox News Digital. "That's just who we are. We're equal opportunity offenders, no holds barred. And we have fun and we go dark, but with kids' gloves. And the whole purpose is not to hurt feelings, it's to actually make people laugh. And even the people that, and our thing is, we try to make the people that we make fun of laugh the loudest. 'Cause flattery is the greatest form of mockery. I mean mockery is the greatest form of flattery." "And so, they've been trying to – the internet or whatever and trying to cancel us for 'White Chicks' forever, but you can't," he added. "You know why? You know who loves 'White Chicks' the most? White chicks. So we told the joke the right way. And that's just how we do our family humor." Wayans is currently on his 'Wild Child' tour, stopping in major cities across the country. Fans can get tickets at He also has a comedy special, "Good Grief," currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
