A low-budget, teens-in-peril horror movie from Blumhouse and starring Octavia Spencer? Yes, please, sign me up for your newsletter. I didn’t know this movie existed until yesterday, but this new trailer for Ma puts this on my radar in a big way. Take a look below.
Damn, I’m way, way into this whole “Chadwick Boseman is
everywhere” thing that’s going on right now. Sure, we’re all psyched for
Black Panther, whick looks like it rules. And I’m sure Marshall,
the Thurgood Marshall biopic he’s in later this year, will be good and stuff. But
I just got real excited for Message from the King, a gritty,
low-budget revenge thriller that’s right in my wheelhouse. Check out the
trailer.
The easy comparison for Tate Taylor’s mystery thriller
The Girl on the Train is Gone Girl. They’re
both based on massively popular, best-selling novels, books that became bona fide
cultural sensations, and the marketing team has done everything in its power to
evoke David Fincher’s artfully trashy noir. More accurate comparisons, however,
are the generic thrillers that populate the Lifetime Movie Network. (Also, I can’t
be the only one annoyed that every mystery with an adult female protagonist has to be
The Girl did This, The Girl with That, This
Girl, can I?)
Cards on the table: I adore J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel
High-Rise. Normally it takes quite a bit to get me excited
about an adaptation, especially of a book I love, but the moment I heard Ben Wheatley, the man behind such gonzo, genre defying fare as Kill List, Sightseers, and A Field in
England, was on the case, it all just made so much damn sense. I
would have kept a close eye on either a new Ben Wheatley film or an adaptation
of High-Rise, but the fact that I could do both at the same
time was just gravy.
Any time you attach the name Ben Wheatley to a movie, you
have our undivided attention. The maniac behind genre twisters like
Sightseers, A Field in England, and
Kill List is back, which on its own is an exciting
prospect, but the fact that he adapted our favorite J.G. Ballard novel,
High-Rise, well that’s just peachy keen in our book. We
can’t think of anyone better to bring this book to life, and star Tom
Hiddleston just dropped a new trailer for us to enjoy.
