#OnTheBigScreen: Halloween Kills, Antlers and Midnight in the Switchgrass

Halloween Kills
Fans of Halloween will absolutely be thrilled by Halloween Kills, offering a memorable and truly frightening odyssey into the nightmarish realm of a malevolent evil that poignantly leads to a conclusion that will have you rewatch from the first moment Michael Myers stepped into our nightmares. With Halloween Kills, fans of the cult horror will get answers to questions that have haunted them during the four-decade franchise that spawned 13 films.

Minutes after Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Strode’s basement, Strode is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor. But when Myers manages to free himself from Strode’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes.

The film is directed by David Gordon Green from a screenplay by Scott Teems and Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.

“If our 2018 Halloween reintroduced the world of Michael and Laurie, which is a story that Halloween Ends will resolve, Halloween Kills is here as a middle chapter to make some noise and see the conflict and chaos that permeates through Haddonfield as fear goes beyond the households and generations of three Strode women,” says Green.

For Curtis, the honour of playing Laurie is matched by how much joy the films have given to fans around the world: “To all of the people that love these movies, I say, ‘Happy Halloween. I hope you don’t come to my house because I won’t open the door.

I leave a bag of candy out in front, and usually it’s all there at the end of the night. I think that means nobody knows where I live, which is good. I wish you a happy one and a safe one, and I thank you for my life.”

Read more here.

Antlers

From the visionary world of acclaimed director Scott Cooper and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro comes Antlers.

In an isolated Oregon town, a middle-school teacher (Keri Russell) and her sheriff brother (Jesse Plemons) become embroiled with her enigmatic student (Jeremy T. Thomas) whose dark secrets lead to terrifying encounters with a legendary ancestral creature who came before them.

Antlers is based on the short story The Quiet Boy by Nick Antosca, screenplay by C. Henry Chaisson, Nick Antosca and Scott Cooper, and is produced by Guillermo del Toro, David S. Goyer and J. Miles Dale.

Adapting author-producer Nick Antosca’s short story The Quiet Boy into the emotionally charged horror feature Antlers, the screenplay by Antosca and C. Henry Chaisson blended native American lore with family drama, with visionary director Scott Cooper exploring a mythical creature who embodied the fears and weaknesses of a small town decimated by the societal issues that so many towns encounter.

Cooper wasn’t interested in horror-for-horror’s sake. He was intent to tackle a narrative that would allow him to employ the classic horror genre as a vehicle for telling a terrifying story of one family’s journey into darkness, steeped in the intimacy of a small north-western seaside town.

“How could I talk about what’s happening in America today and somehow draw those themes into horror? To me, the best of those films shares elements of social commentary, while also delving into the fears and weaknesses that haunt so many of us,” he says, adding that centering his story around a tortured yet formidable heroine as embodied by the versatile actress Keri Russell was a “complete coup for my film”.

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Midnight in the Switchgrass

The race to find a serial killer who abducts his prey from truck stops brings two law officers together in a deadly race against the clock in director Randall Emmett’s tense action-drama.

Florida police detective Byron Crawford (Emile Hirsch) is a man whose faith and sense of duty have guided him in his law-enforcement career. But Crawford is haunted by a string of deaths that won’t end until the killer is apprehended. An FBI agent (Megan Fox) working with her seasoned partner (Bruce Willis) needs Byron’s help in understanding the dark corners of Florida and the MO of the murderer.

One of the entertainment industry’s most prolific film producers, Randall Emmett, who has produced over 50 feature films since his start as Mark Wahlberg’s assistant in the 1990s, now makes his directorial debut with Midnight in the Switchgrass, bringing all of his experience and affinity to this dramatic thriller, directing from a screenplay by Alan Horsnail.

Emile Hirsch comments: “It’s about defeating evil. Byron Crawford is a detective trying to solve the homicides of missing girls who have been brutally murdered, and he essentially shuts down when he can’t do it. He thinks there’s no hope for him to solve them.

When Byron meets up with Rebecca Lombardo, the FBI agent investigating the same kinds of crimes, they team up together and try with all they have to track down the killer. It’s a great story, in some ways similar to The Silence of the Lambs, Along Came a Spider, and other terrific serial killer movies that I love.”

Read more here.

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