The Philippine Online Chronicles

What’s the next big thing in the horror freak show?

I have always been of the opinion that we get the monsters we deserve. Like politicians and the leaders of men, monsters have a way of filtering down to the bottom of the psyche and staying there unmoving in torpor until we need them to carry out particularly gruesome things or, in the case of demons, a scapegoat to blame when we just can’t face what we’ve done.

It’s much the same in popular culture and media, except that there’s also a curious butterfly effect to the creature-centric horror subgenre. A zombie convulses its newly risen limbs in Hollywood and (what do you know?) a vampire shakes off the dust from its cape to challenge the supremacy of the mafia in London (more on that later).

So while the bloodsuckers currently have a cold hand on the monster movie and book industry, big media is no doubt gearing up to push a new kind of monster for our delectation. And no Mr. Jigsaw slashers, no matter how depraved, malformed, or smart, count. Hmmm, excepting those mad few who’ve come back from Hell (stand up Mr Krueger and Mr. Vorhees) or have been deemed so unfit for the infernal marshes they’ve been expelled from like so much silicone from a sorority victim’s rent chest, that they can actually play in the big monster mano-a-mano.

Let’s take a look at the contenders for this year and for early 2011.

The Vampire Nation wants your love (and blood)

Homo vampiricus still has its fangs deeply sucking at popular culture’s white neck, thanks mainly due to the very lucrative Hollywood adaptation of Stefenie Meyer’s New Moon, HBO’s recently completed second season of True Blood, and CW’s rising bloodsucker drama series Vampire Diaries. If we didn’t know any better, it’d be easy to say there’s a Lestat figure orchestrating the rise of fangs in media.

To continue their unholy nocturnal reign, last month’s recent North American showing of Daybreakers (starring Ethan Hawke as a slightly mad vampire scientist) gave a good kick in the balls to pretenders to the throne. Surely something to watch for in its Asian release, the film is set in 2017 where a plague has transformed most of the world into vampires. With the plasma supply getting scarcer daily, the vampires farm what remaining humans they can while looking for the next bright idea for their continued survival. As they plot and ponder thoughts for longevity, an underground team of vampires (among them Ethan Hawke) uncovers a way to rescue us humans. Initial reviews of this movie are good despite being helmed by two directors whose former outing (The Undead) got a lukewarm reception at best even from genre fans.

For October this year watch out for Priest, with Paul Bettany shedding his Legion-acquired terminator angel wings in favor of monkish garb. Described as a vampire western, this one sees Bettany flagrantly disobeying church edicts to track down and horridly suntan the vampires who kidnapped his little niece. It’s also based on a manga from Tokyo! Pop and produced by horror stalwart Sam Raimi. Another reason to watch the darn thing is that it stars the truly sumptuous Maggie Q. Oh, and Karl Urban.

Probably one of the weirdest if not most ambitious upcoming vampire movies is Dead Cert. Still currently wrapping up its production, this one is a movie about vampires versus gangsters. I kid you not. I saw a trailer of this cut with only the first seven days of filming and it looked pretty sleek.

Slated to come out late this year from Momentum Pictures, this vampire mobster thriller stars UK method thespian Craig Fairbrass (you may recall him as Dr. Jekyll in LXG), who plays ex-mafia man Freddy Frankham. As Freddy is drawn back into the world of organized crime, the mob goes up against an outfit of Romanian drug dealers peddling a new drug called Bliss. As the stakes get higher, Freddy and his boys find that there is more to these Romanians than just an appetite for dominance in the UK’s illegal pharmaceutical market. Oh my, I get goose bumps just thinking about crime and blood.

Other vampiric mentionables that’ll get your blood up are Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (adapted from a young adult series) with a local theatrical release coming soon and the unusually rumored Underworld 4 currently in production but slated for a January 2011 showing. I say unusual for the White Wolf game world Hollywood rip-off because insider tattles have pegged it as a space movie. Even with a reduced Kate Beckinsale involvement can you imagine the sheer perverse joy of watching space-faring Vampires and werewolves. . .oops, I mean Lycans, duking it out in a galaxy far far away?

One of the best news in vampire fandom is the film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Now with a trailer circulating it’s been confirmed that Tim Burton will produce while Timur Bekmambetov directs. Though an actual release date has yet to be set if, for nothing else (and based on Burton’s penchant for over the top and stunning imagery – see the currently showing Alice in Wonderland), this movie will look smoking. Honest!

Likely the coup de grace to ensuring that the vampire nation remains a force to contend with this year up to 2011 is the new comics series American Vampire from DC/Vertigo. What makes this special isn’t just that it features a brand new species of vampire that’s powered by the sun in an ongoing series set back in 1920s Los Angeles and working its way forward, it’s that it’s written by rising scribe Scott Snyder and – get this --  Stephen King. Yep, in the flesh. With the first issue likely out by the time you read this, American Vampire will certainly prove to be entertaining and, with King’s involvement, no doubt a landmark project for Vertigo.

Pardon me, your innards are showing

Freshly rotting from the roller coaster ride that was Zombieland and Romero’s Diary of the Dead, plus the major hits scored by Seth Grahame-Smith’s book Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, and those by Max Brooks (World War Z, etc) the reanimated horde isn’t keen to give up its grip on the global mind with putrid limb or teeth just yet.

They even made a big splash in videogames with the acclaimed, and truly fun, Left for Dead, Left for Dead Two, and last year’s release of Dead Space: Extraction for Nintendo’s Wii.

That said, the thing about zombie movies is that it’s truly a monster for all seasons and a new film by George Romero ups the ante even more. Though George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead is still much under wraps, its release date is more or less confirmed within 2010. Everything still so secret, in fact, that the only thing I’ve been able to find out about this one is that it’s set on an island. Hmm, I can still dig it.

Locally, we’re still in a corpse light high, and comics writer and illustrator Kevin Ang adds to this delight for the undead with the first issue of his Zombies in Manila. I bought my copy at P60 at a Cubao comics shop and it was pretty well worth it. The black and white art adds a starkness to the 28-page stapled mini-comic that features a band of zombie destroyers who make their haven in Intramuros and ride around in a bad ass, Mad-Max-type customized jeepney.

You’ll be surprised at who they meet in one hunting expedition through the ruined streets of the metro. While it needs polish and scores no originality points, I have news that says the second issue will be out soon and have good hopes that it’ll up the ante.

Even though their release isn’t confirmed at all for this year, what better things to anticipate in the zombie movie game than the adaptation of Brooks’ World War Z and Grahame-Smith’s Pride, Prejudice and Zombies? With the latter, it’s been confirmed that Natalie Portman both stars (as feisty Elizabeth Bennet with kung fu and shotgun of course) and produces (for her own Handsome Charlie films in cooperation with Dark Films), while Richard Kelly directs. The former’s script, meanwhile, was written by comic book author J. Michael Straczynski (who also penned Clint Eastwood's Changeling and was a co-creator of Babylon 5). Doesn’t matter. With those aces, genre fans won’t want to miss either one.

A big highlight for 2011 is the fourth installment in the Resident Evil movie franchise. Resident Evil: Afterlife still features model hottie Milla Jovovich as the virus-morphed, supercharged Alice battling against the forces of Umbrella Corporation, except that now she’s joined by Wentworth Miller and Ali Larter (who reprises her role from RE: Extinction). While the initial release date pegged it this year, production has pushed back to next year because, hopefully, it’s still shooting goodies.

While critics lambasted the last Resi for a generally lackluster script and even lazier plot, hopes are high that this installment will provide a much needed kick in the franchise’s twitching limbs. Making this one in 3-D certainly helps.

Possession is 9/10ths of the law

The worthiest contender to the reign of the walking dead and the fanged corpses are the boys down below. I’ve always had a soft spot for the infernal host (see Exorcist, Exorcism of Emily Rose, Paranormal Activity, etc) and the recent run of the absolute gore camp that was Jennifer’s Body (oh, Ms. Fox, if only all the possessed had your curves), Sam Raimi’s mixed bag in Drag Me to Hell, and the fine genre hadouken that was the Ti West directed House of the Devil, give me hope for a new creature to call king of the monster hill.

I loved demons so much in fact that I teamed up with local publisher Estranghero Press (helmed by fellow genre fan Joey Nacino, where he co-edits) and put out a book all about it. The e-book anthology Demons of the New Year featuring some of the best Pinoy horror scribbling about Satan worship, its dire consequences, et al, should be available on-line by the time you read this. So check that out if only not to embarrass me further by my already shameless plug. I know. I’m a despicable creature.

Turns out Hollywood shares my enthusiasm for going spiritually south with the remake of Night of the Demons. It was based on the classic 1988 movie of the same name (which itself spawned two sequels) right smack at the time that Americans were well and truly worried about having Satan worshippers in every neighborhood. Supposedly out by this March, it notably stars Shannon Elizabeth and Edward Furlong.

In April, then, Freddy Krueger lives again in the long-anticipated release of the Nightmare on Elm Street remake (produced by Michael Bay) where Robert Englund, who played nearly all the old Freddies in the original and most of the sequels, is replaced by the serious acting talent of Jackie Earle Haley. Aside from that, not too much has changed in the basic plot where pedophile Freddy gets burned to death by angry Elm Street parents and gets spit back out of hell as a demonic avatar to haunt the dreams of bad young men and women. The new make-up also has Freddy resembling a real life third-degree-burn victim just for kicks, I guess.

Never mind Mr. Krueger though. What I’m really crazy about is the classic dressed up in new clothes that is the remake of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. With Barker as consultant and producer, things are sure looking up for the race of the demonic sensualists that is the Order of the Gash aka The Cenobites (among them the awesomely prime evil Pinhead). Slated for a release sometime in 2011 under Dimension Films, this remake will introduce new viewers to the big screen version of Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart.

They’re crazy for you

Other notables who prove to be almost nuisance candidates include the recently shown thumbs-down that was Legion (its terminator-angel-in-a-hick-town was small fry compared to Walken’s divinely seething Gabriel in The Prophecy) and the surprisingly decent Wolfman (where Benicio Del Toro made a pretty good lycanthrope but Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving predictably proved too much thespian power and stole the show).

We shouldn’t count angels out too soon though as Anne Rice is currently hitting it big with her Angel Time novel. A first in her series of holy creature books (I think her fourth novel since she turned all hardcore Catholic) called the Song of the Seraphim arc, it bears noting that even a really bad adaptation of her vampire novels (remember Queen of the Damned?) sells in theaters so she just might get offered that option. Jeez.

If you haven’t seen the animated Haunted World of El Superbeasto(aka Rob Zombie’s depraved camp homage to all things carnivalesque and grotesque) about a Mexican luchador and his sexy sidekick’s adventures in a Mad Magazine world of frights then you owe it to yourself to download it pronto. Also expect Nicolas Cage to go medieval in Season of the Witch which should show a release this March. Along with Hellboy’s Ron Perlman, Cage plays medieval knight Behmen, who’s transporting a (you guessed it) witch to an abbey where she and her powers can be destroyed.

Among the movies featuring a decidedly newfangled monster is a remake of a lesser known George Romero circa 1973 product. The Crazies stars the talented Timothy Olyphant along with Silent Hill’s Radha Mitchell where they fend off a pretty much 28 Days Later virus-based version of zombies (well, actually murderous psychopaths who stand still a lot and don’t reanimate). This film ran last month in North America and got mixed reviews-- blamed mainly on Sahara director Breck Eisner, whom genre critics say can’t do horror to save his scrawny neck. We’ll have to wait for a local screening to find out.

FEARLESS FORECAST

So, to sum up: while the vampire nation burns out steadily (albeit molasses slow) into adolescent emo-land obsolescence and the exhausted zombie horde is occasionally resuscitated by the rare big-budget film, the fiends from the pit are on the rise as they hitch their star to the Luciferian promise of fame and, uh, more souls to torture.

We always get the monsters we deserve. So, ladies and gents, Hell is going to be the place to hang out.