First Trailer for INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY

While the subtitle of the latest Insidious film may have the word "final" in it there is seemingly no end in sight for this horror franchise as, while it is not a part of James Wan's ever-expanding Conjuring universe, it is part of his brand and therefore a key component in ushering in this new age of horror that has come about in the post-torture porn era. While that genre will attempt to make something of a comeback this fall with the release of Jigsaw other films such as this week's IT re-make (no doubt the reason this trailer is debuting now) and October's Happy Death Day are set to capitalize on pure terror and (hopefully) some intelligently positioned social satire. Though Insidious: The Last Key may not have a primed for quality release date with that first weekend in January this is a release date that has somewhat become synonymous with cheap, but profitable scary movies over the last few years with the likes of The Devil Inside and The Forest. While I'm hoping The Last Key will prove to be of better quality than those films I like having something in January to look forward to and if this first-look trailer is any indication it seems writer/star Leigh Whannell (who directed the third installment) and new director to the franchise Adam Robitel (a writer on Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension) have a real grasp on what they wanted to do with this film in terms of taking the series in a new, bold direction and, if nothing else, that's reason to be excited as I've been a fan of the Insidious series from the beginning despite the last installment feeling like something of a placeholder. While this fourth outing doesn't boast any "names" outside the return of Lin Shaye's Elise Rainer it is Elise that will seemingly take center stage here as she's been the connective tissue throughout much of the previous three films this time taking on her most fearsome and personal haunting yet in her own family home. Insidious: The Last Key also stars Angus Sampson, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker, Marcus Henderson, and opens on January 5th, 2018.

GET OUT Review

Get Out is the directorial debut of Jordan Peele who you might recognize from the sketch comedy show, Key & Peele. Get Out is not a comedy though it contains a fair amount of laughs, namely from the performance of stand-up comedian LilRel Howery who will get many, many jobs from this star-making performance. What Get Out actually turns out to be is a rather striking thriller that provides a topical conversation around racial tensions that then amplifies and exaggerates the inherent tensions of its presented scenario in a way that both plays with the tropes of the horror genre while delivering commentary on innate and unavoidable fears in the black community. I heard someone explain it as, "playing on black people's fear of white people's fear of black people," and it's hard to put it any better or more simply than that. This is all to get to the point that Get Out is making the point that we need to stop pretending we know what it's like to walk in other people's shoes. Not that these assumptions can't be compassionate, but more that they are unnecessary. Get Out begins as one thing-playing on the natural awkwardness that comes along with a black guy going to meet his white girlfriends entirely white family in their very white/suburban neighborhood for the first time and then, once it arrives there, takes steps using its genre classification to get at this idea that no matter how good or well-intentioned one might be, it is near impossible to have a real comprehension of what people who have experienced struggles and/or faced some kind of oppression have indeed been through and more over, who they became out of such experiences. Get Out is a film that plays on those facets of ourselves that we'd rather not acknowledge-that no matter how much we believe ourselves to be above stereotyping people or forming preconceptions, that there is a truth to such ways of thinking and Peele uses this unavoidable, unflattering truth to draw out a fair amount of anxiety. Peele plays on those anxieties and social standards exceptionally as through to the very last frame Get Out keeps things as taut as any horror movie in recent memory while never losing sight of its original intent no matter how crazy the genre hijinks get.    

PETE'S DRAGON Review

I saw the 1977 version of Pete's Dragon numerous times throughout my childhood. I still own a DVD copy of it that sits alongside the likes of Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks on my shelf, but do I recall much of it? No, not really. I can't put my finger on why exactly nothing other than the character design of Elliot the hand-drawn dragon comes to mind, but it doesn't. Not so far as story goes anyway or what the underlying lessons of the picture might have been attempting to teach children of that generation. And so, while I have memories surrounding the original film on which this new, 2016 version directed and written by David Lowery (Ain't Them Bodies Saints) is based I don't recall the specifics of the actual movie-leaving me to wonder what about this story was worth retelling. What, if anything, might make it relevant now? On the surface it would seem that this new, updated version of Pete's Dragon is here for no other reason than for the studio to continue operating on brand recognition; remaking their older classics into new, live-action spectacles enhanced by today's digital effects. It could also be that every generation more or less needs its evil corporation cautionary tale and what better way to do that here then by positioning the adults as not necessarily bad guys, but people simply caught-up in their own agendas who happen to work for timber companies? Immediately this version of Pete's Dragon feels different than this though, there seems no hidden agenda, no sense of obligation to re-make this specific material because Disney deemed it necessary, but rather one can sense a desire to convey this story for reasons bigger than any financial gain or profit it might earn. Rather, Lowery has crafted a film that desires to get at the heart of what makes the innocence of childhood so hard to grasp, so difficult to define, and how depressing it can be that we don't understand the preciousness of that time as we're experiencing it or more harshly-when it is taken away from us and all we have to remember it by are those rose-tinted glasses that distort it in favor of the pleasantries. The 2016 Pete's Dragon is something of a love letter to those pleasant moments. To how strong the ability to believe in something greater is at an age when we don't fully understand the scope or nature of the world or the human race. The best part is that none of these ideas are overtly telegraphed in the film. The film is very much the story of what happens when a town discovers a boy living in the woods with his pet dragon, but through this it makes one feel all of the aforementioned emotions and it is in those elicited emotions the movie transcends whatever it might have originally been intended to be.