Horror Report

Day: October 2, 2022

  • SMILE!! You did well at the box office this weekend

    SMILE!! You did well at the box office this weekend

    SMILE did great this weekend .. in the United States Box office: $22 mil.. Friday alone fetched in $8.2 mil..

    We have this dispatch late Sunday from DEADLINE, explaining that SMILE did pretty well globally, too, at the box office:

    Landing the top offshore debut for the studios was Paramount’s Smile with $14.5M from 58 markets, and $36.5M globally. The horror audience grinned in all areas with good word of mouth for the Parker Finn-directed movie that was also tops domestically. 

    Reinforcing that audiences want to go back to the cinema for something fresh, on a like-for-like basis, the offshore start on Smile is 18% above Truth or Dare, 55% ahead of Hereditary and on par with The Black Phone. Smile, whose first footage intrigued exhibition at CineEurope earlier this year, was led by the UK with $2M from 520 locations at No. 2. France was also a No. 2 debut with $1.4M from 303 sites. In horror-leaning Mexico, the movie scored a No. 1 start of $1.1M from 855 locations. Rounding out the Top 5 were Germany ($1M from 316) and Australia ($800K from 206)

    We saw the movie this weekend as well. Amazing cinematic effects–the upside down camera angles.. the dreadful music.. the dark hallways that did NOT have something jump out, and the scenes where something did..

    It was all effective.

    However there were some less than great things. It felt like a horror movie that turned into a thriller and then back into a horror again, with a twist ending that went right back to the ending that no one seemed to want..

    We ended up liking the thriller angle of the film more than the horror. But boy. those jump scares. We thought someone walking down the aisle to go to the bathroom in the theater was going to fall backwards–they chose the scene that featured the jumpiest of the jump scares to walk down the dark steps..

    The marketing for the movie was brilliant, with smiling people gracing baseball games and public locations for the past two weeks. Nice move!

    But what few are talking about with this is the ‘smile’ concept. It is based on a short horror film.. but it also seems to borrow a lot of the concept of IT FOLLOWS. In that movie, what followed was a sexually transmitted disease and bad reputation. In this film, it is mental illness. We cloud it and hide it with a smile.

    I am not sure if the film makers went for a deeper meaning than what we got, but it sure felt like something much more meaningful was hiding under the surface.

    THE WOKE CHOKE

    But what did NOT do well this weekend was BROS:

    Despite glowing reviews for the Judd Apatow-produced film, Bros has not been a hit at the box office and is estimated to only make $4.8M during its opening weekend, half of what Universal was estimating. Eichner acknowledged that the romantic comedy he stars in isn’t tracking within a certain segment of the population in the country.

    Homophobia is the excuse for the film doing poorly..

    More from the DEADLINE article:

    “Even with glowing reviews, great Rotten Tomatoes scores, an A CinemaScore, etc, straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros. And that’s disappointing but it is what it is,” he continued.

    The comedian stands by the movie and encouraged “everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo” to go watch Bros.

  • Destruction still being found in Florida after Hurricane Ian

    Destruction still being found in Florida after Hurricane Ian

    Ian death count tops 70 in Florida. Drowning leading cause…

    River flooding menaces inland towns…

    Hospital without running water faces sanitation crisis…

    Biden to meet DeSantis to survey destruction…

    To illustrate the changing landscape, you can find a number of scenes on social media and news sites..

    This one seemed the striking:

    Sanibel lighthouse. Before and after Ian:

  • MEDIA FEAR over Russian bat virus

    MEDIA FEAR over Russian bat virus

    The fear has been palpable! At least if you read some mainstream news sources.

    Over the past week we have heard more and more about a Russian bat virus that, experts warn, is going to cause the next pandemic.

    While the latest smattering of stories came from just this week, the virus has been studied since 2020 .. In 2020, a team of Russian scientists collected a few horseshoe bats in Sochi National Park in southern Russia. The Russians identified, in those bats, a new virus they called Khosta-2. Behaviorally, the virus seemed to have a lot in common with SARS-CoV-2.

    Just this year, there were two additional studies published. The initial results, which the team described in a new peer-reviewed study that appeared last week in the science journal PLOS Pathogens, are worrying. The second bat virus didn’t seem all that infectious. But Khosta-2 appears to like human cells and do well taking them over.

    Hence.. the ‘terrifying” adjectives being placed in headlines.

    “We tested how well the spike proteins from these bat viruses infect human cells under different conditions,” the scientists wrote. “We found that the spike from the virus Khosta-2 could infect [the] cells, similar to human pathogens using the same entry mechanisms.”

    Equally troubling, Khosta-2 proved “resistant to neutralization by serum from individuals who had been vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2.” In other words, our bodies’ defenses against COVID-19 might not protect us from a hypothetical disease caused by Khosta-2.

    There is real science here and real facts. But limit your fear when reading.

  • The DAHMER Netflix movie has enraged some family of deceased–and cast who worked on it have PTSD!?

    The DAHMER Netflix movie has enraged some family of deceased–and cast who worked on it have PTSD!?

    We read this interesting headline this morning:

    ‘Dahmer’ Crew Member Slams Set as ‘One of the Worst Shows I’ve Ever Worked On’: ‘The Trailer Itself Gave Me PTSD’

    From the Variety story,

    “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” production coordinator Kim Alsup went viral on Twitter before the Netflix series even debuted when she revealed she was “treated horribly” on set. Alsup wrote that she was one of just two Black people on the set and that other crew members often called her by the other Black person’s name.

    “They kept calling me her name. We both had braids, she was dark skin and 5’10. I’m 5’5,” Alsup wrote on Twitter. “Working on this took everything I had as I was treated horribly. I look at the Black female lead differently now too.”

    And more:

    “I just feel like it’s going to bring back too many memories of working on it. I don’t want to have these PTSD types of situations,” Alsup said. “The trailer itself gave me PTSD, which is why I ended up writing that tweet and I didn’t think that anybody was going to read.”

    This is on the heels of another story we read a few days ago about at least one of the people who lived through the Jeffrey Dahmer real life nightmare speaking out about how it feels to see his image and story being broadcast to a global audience in the hit Netflix show:

    In an essay for Insider, Errol Lindsey’s sister Rita Isbell felt that Netflix should have asked for their thoughts on the project. Instead, she feels like “they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed.”

    MORE..

    “When I saw some of the show, it bothered me, especially when I saw myself — when I saw my name come across the screen and this lady saying verbatim exactly what I said.

    If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought it was me. Her hair was like mine, she had on the same clothes. That’s why it felt like reliving it all over again. It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back then.

    I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it.”

    Now some are enraged that the movie makers would use “PTSD” in their description of emotion–after all it should really be those who were directly involved that may experience that. But we all could experience a little touch of it.

    The Dahmer nightmare was real .. I lived through news coverage but that was the closest I got. Along with the 1990s being filled with dark morbid jokes using his name..

  • Welcome in October with the most Octoberist movie scene of all

    Welcome in October with the most Octoberist movie scene of all

    And it is from HALLOWEEN 3 no less!

    Welcome to October…

    And just to think.. this Halloweeniest of all scenes comes to us courtesy of the most discredited Halloween movie of all time, Halloween 3!

    It’s time to re-kindle that appreciation of that movie.

    Especially the scene like this.. it just has a melancholy nostalgic feel that brings back the rush of childhood emotions, doesn’t it?

    That backdrop.. that city in the distance.. that silhouette of horror.

    That chill is in the air, at least if you’re in areas prone to such chill. And with it comes those surreal and deep sunsets, quite like one we saw just the other day in Horror Report home base:

    This month, with any sunset that penetrates the land, you can add in a silhouette of a witch and you’ll have this magical scene from Halloween 3!