April 20, 2015 – THE HORROR REPORT

THE VISIT poster makes rounds after REDDIT posting

A user on REDDIT posted a teaser poster to an upcoming M Night Shyalaman film THE VISIT set for release on September 11, 2015. The comments thread on the photo has taken on a life of its own..

Shyamalan ‘s THE VISIT tells a story of a brother and sister (Ed Oxenbould and Olivia De Jonge) who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip by Mom, Kathryn Hahn. The trailer for the film shows things going quite fine.. then tension builds when the two children discover that their grandparents are involved in something deeply disturbing.

Hence the warning: Don’t leave your room after 9:30 pm.

A number of people online have noted the similarities in appearance between the VISIT poster and THE VILLAGE ..

DOLLS ARE CREEPY. But have you met Peggy?

There are haunting dolls. And there is Peggy.. And if you believe the hype surrounding this latest paranormal internet sensation, she is so powerful in her fear that she causes nasuea, headaches. And heart attacks.

Annabel Fenwick Elliott described the situation in the UK DAILY MAIL. A number of other global media sources latched onto to the paranormal tale.

Here is the lowdown and what you need to know about this plastic piece of evil.. Jayne Harris is a paranormal investigator in the UK. She posted photos and a video of a doll that Harris claims is inhabited by the spirit of a Holocaust victim.. Viewers of the videos and content have written Harris with personal messages about how PEGGY, the doll, has affected their lives.. Some have complained of crippling headaches after seeing Peggy. Some reported visions of mental institutions and abuse. Others said they became anxious. And one said she experienced a heart attack..

The one video–creepy indeed–involves Harris driving PEGGY in the car. Peggy staring at the camera is a little unnerving.. I had to tell myself it is just a doll..
Just a doll.

And this is the doll:

And this is one of the videos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/embed/video/1176217_1_1429262667692.html

From the DAILY MAIL story:

‘One lady said that when she opened a photograph of Peggy, her computer froze on the picture and the room went cold.

‘She then said she felt someone in the room with her and could hear them moving around.This lady was messaging me at the time via Facebook asking me to quickly advise her on what to do.

‘I took Peggy down into an isolation area and requested that she cease her tormenting. Apparently everything returned to normal.’

Mrs Harris continued: ‘Another lady yesterday said she had been experiencing light bulbs blowing and a presence in her home after she had been speaking about Peggy.

‘With Peggy, it’s not only while people are looking at her or watching her, it seems to be afterwards too.’

Mrs Harris, who has herself experienced migraines and feeling drained after working with Peggy, said she has never seen a case of this intensity before.

She runs an organisation called Haunted Dolls, and often gets random items in the post with no prior background.

Mrs Harris uses an array of gadgets and experiments to piece together the puzzles surrounding them.

There have been a wide spectrum of people attempting to place a story with Peggy, a background to the supposed spirit inhabiting the doll. Two mediums believe she is a Jewish soul and a victim of Hitler’s World War II atrocities.

There has been a Facebook group set up to study the ongoing odyssey of PEGGY..

But there are also many detractors who are looking at the PEGGY story as a bunch of loonies who need to be locked up. One comment on the DAILY MAIL article was funny enough to be reprinted here:

It really works I suffered bad chest pains by watching this! I thought I was having an heart attack but then I realised it was that dodgy kebab that gave me heartburn.

Even those who find this situation comical are also understanding that it could either be collective consciousness.. perhaps people giving the power to the doll to become fearful and mighty.. or just a group of people making each other scared.

Dolls are freaky.. Clyde Lewis showcased that brilliantly in 2014 when he broadcasted a live NET stream of Nickle in a dark room alone. The doll moved.

There is a little bit of a personal tale I’d like to relay, one that was brought to the forefront of my mind by Peggy. When I was a child, perhaps 4 or 5, I was at my grandmother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. My brother and cousin devised a very elaborate prank that scared me to this day.. They rigged my grandmother’s doll (freakish as well) with strings, turned the lights off, and continued to call out my name to go into the room. A dark room.. with a little beam of light on the doll, from the shadows they would make the doll’s arms and legs move. I screamed and ran each time.. And in a weird way, Peggy looks sort of like that doll of my childhood fears..

Regardless of truth or not to the paranormal aspect, Peggy is one frightening lady. Blank eyes. Motionless face. A doll that I would not want to see staring at me in a dark room..

And for that reason, I myself did not watch the videos. Perhaps paranoia.. Or maybe I’m much more comfortable believing that PEGGY is just a doll..
Just a doll…

It’s all in a face: Wes Craven’s perpective on changes in FREDDY’s mug for NEW NIGHTMARE revealed

Freddy Krueger is still one of the most haunting horror movie icons of all time.. Robert Englund made that so, without him there would have been no sequels. But without the intricate and frightening makeup job that teams performed over the course of several movies, there would have been additionally no marketing and artwork that has accompanied the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise–minus the newest incarnation that Hollywood tried to pass on to fans..

The HOLLYWOOD REPORTER interviewed Wes Craven about a number of different topics.. but the makeup of FREDDY’S face made the most headlines. Craven said he had no role in the MTV’s changing of the GHOSTFACE face.. And more, reported by Emmet McDermott:

“In general,” Craven says, reflecting on his own experience with the Scream sequel and beyond, “we didn’t mess with the mask at all. It’s something we didn’t try to change. With Freddy [Krueger] and the New Nightmare (below right), I felt that I probably should have stuck with the original face (below left). [With Scream,] we just let Ghostface be Ghostface.”

“It would have been safer [not to change Freddy],” Craven explains. “I’m not going to speculate in public, probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it, but you know, sometimes you realize that something’s not broken, so don’t fix it. And that was the course we took on all the Screamfilms: Don’t mess with that, it’s just perfect.”

For Craven, the success of the Scream franchise hinged upon the mask. No other mask would have done the trick. “No way. No way,” Craven insists. “I knew it in my bones that [Ghostface] was a unique find, and I had to convince the studio that they had to go the extra mile to get it.”

I thought then and do so more now after reading this HOLLYWOOD reporter story that the licensing fee to use the mask was much more costly than MTV would have preferred. Money talked. In this case, it became clear that changing the face would be cheaper, and they could spin it into somewhat positive press..

Craven’s perspective on changing Freddy may be a commentary on MTV’s change, too. Will people still watch the MTV version? Sure.. but will it feel the same? No.

x x x

While we are on the subject of FREDDY…ROLLING STONE recently posted a great article that NIGHTMARE fans may want to consider bookmarking or even printing if they’re so inclined to save paper .. Wes Craven and others talked openly about some of the aspects of FREDDY he purposely planned. Such as the glove.. knives, Craven said, have been scary for 1000 years. With a glove consumed by knives, Craven led to a modern day weapon that had deep roots in the human psyche for generation. The ROLLING STONE article also details the ‘Tina’ body bag scene from the first film–this was personally one of those moments in FREDDY history that haunted me. Amanda Wyss, who played Tina, described the REAL body bag that was used during the scene:

I freaked out in the body bag. It wasn’t a “stunt” body bag — this was a low-budget film, so somebody went to the morgue, got a [real] body bag and poked some pinholes in it. There’s no inside zipper on the thing, they just zipped me in. I was just like, “Seriously?”