Cinemas & Home Entertainment this week…
GRIM PICKINGS this week includes key dates to dismember with the Halloween season bringing an assortment of treats to cinemas and home entertainment!
IN CINEMAS
Thursday October 25th
HALLOWEEN
Hands down the most anticipated genre film of the year has to be David Gordon Green’s HALLOWEEN, a direct follow-up to John Carpenter’s 1978 seminal slasher classic. Rest assured HALLOWEEN fans, Green’s sequel is a genuine love letter to Carpenter’s original and while it amps up the on-screen carnage, it retains the genuine suspense of its predecessor. Surprisingly though HALLOWEEN becomes more Laurie Strode’s story than it does Michael’s with a career best performance by scream queen extraordinaire Jamie Lee Curtis! Laurie (Curtis), haunted by Michael Myers since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago, must confront him one last time when he finally escapes the asylum in which he’s been locked up since.
GHOST STORIES
Based on the critically acclaimed and record-breaking theatre production, GHOST STORIES, this British anthology horror is written and directed by the playwrights themselves Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman. A perfect concoction of subversive humour and horror abound in this beautifully stylized and perfectly realized adaptation of the stage show. Professor Phillip Goodman (Nyman) devotes his life to exposing phoney psychics and fraudulent supernatural shenanigans. His skepticism soon gets put to the test when he receives news of three chilling and inexplicable cases — disturbing visions in an abandoned asylum, a car accident deep in the woods and the spirit of an unborn child. Even scarier — each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor’s own life.
GOOSEBUMPS 2: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN
If you like us we’re a little disappointed by the recent family frightener THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALL, you can take solace in the fact that GOOSEBUMPS 2: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN delivers the goods! Capturing the same energy, humour and child-friendly scares of its predecessor, GOOSEBUMPS 2 is the perfect family genre outing this Halloween season! While collecting junk one day, best friends Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor) and Sam (Caleel Harris) meet Slappy, a mischievous talking dummy from an unpublished “Goosebumps” book by R.L. Stine. Hoping to start his own family, Slappy kidnaps Sonny’s mother (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and brings all of his ghoulish friends back to life — just in time for Halloween. As the sleepy town becomes overrun with monsters, witches and other mysterious creatures, Sonny joins forces with his sister, Sam and a kindly neighbour (Ken Jeong) to save Sonny’s mom and foil Slappy’s plan.
HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Wednesday October 24th
SUMMER OF ’84
Following its Australian Premiere in July at Monster Fest Travelling Sideshow Adelaide, RKSS – the directorial trio behind the 2015 cult smash TURBO KID, return with a sinister hit of 80s nostalgia in their unpredictable and legitimately unsettling thriller, SUMMER OF ’84. Every serial killer is somebody’s neighbor. For 15-year-old Davey, the thought of having a serial killer in his suburban town is a scary yet exciting prospect at the start of a lazy summer. In hormonal overdrive, Davey and his friends dream of sexual conquests until the news reports of the Cape May killer. Davey convinces his friends that they must investigate, and they uncover that his next-door neighbor, an unassuming, single police officer, could be the prime suspect. Could Davey possibly be right, or is it his overactive imagination?
THE DOMESTICS
Remember that road trip with the parents to visit your grandparents back in ’09? It was the thick of summer and the old man didn’t want to run the air con, your iPod was flat and your Mum was blasting the AM, your one pitstop for fuel and the servo is out of sausage rolls …it was horrible! Well imagine this…everyone you know is dead, every store is looted, murderous gangs rule the roads and you’ve got to make it cross-country in attempt to reach sanctuary…it’s THE DOMESTICS and it’s just about as brutal as a road trip can get! In a terrifying post-apocalyptic world inhabited by murderous gangs divided into deadly factions, Nina (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Tyler Hoechlin) race desperately across the lawless countryside in search of safety and must work together as they are pushed to the breaking point in order to survive.
BEIRUT
From Brad Anderson, the director responsible for THE MACHINIST and SESSION 9, comes this intricate and engaging spy thriller with standout performances from Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike. In 1980s Beirut, Mason Skiles is a former U.S. diplomat who is called back into service to save a colleague from the group that is possibly responsible for his own family’s death. Meanwhile, a CIA field agent who is working under cover at the American embassy is tasked with keeping Mason alive and ensuring that the mission is a success.
Grim Pickings is written weekly by Jarret Gahan.