We had learned last month that Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession is getting a remake from Smile writer/director Parker Finn, with Robert Pattinson attached to produce the fresh take. The project had caused a bidding war among major studios including A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros., and it sounds like Paramount has landed the hot package.

According to a brand new report this week from The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Pictures is now in final talks to acquire the Possession remake package.

Parker Finn is writing, directing and producing, with Pattinson also producing. THR notes, “[Pattinson’s] acting involvement will be clarified down the road as the script and schedules develop.”

THR reminds, “Set in West Berlin, the original Possession starred Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the field to his wife (Isabella Adjani) and son. All is not quiet on the marital front, as the wife asks for a divorce and the couple descends into a destructive cycle that not only includes infidelity and neglect, but spins into murder, a tentacled alien creature and doppelgangers.”

The website’s report also previews, “Possession is intended to be Finn’s next movie. It will afford Finn a bigger scale, but sources say he hopes to keep an eye on an intimate story.”

Parker Finn’s debut feature Smile was produced and distributed by Paramount, so the upcoming Possession remake will keep Paramount in the Parker Finn business. Smile 2 releases October 18, with Finn returning to the director’s chair for the upcoming horror sequel.

Robert Pattinson in ‘The Batman’

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Many of us remember Director Jim Gillespie and Writer Kevin Williamson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer as a teen slasher with a great soundtrack. A movie that injected something that felt a little like Scream back into our veins for a moment after the cultural phenomenon had taken horror by storm a year before. It may feel like I Know What You Did Last Summer exists solely to capitalize on this moment, but that’s not necessarily the case. The film was rushed into production after the success of Scream, sure. But the story’s origins actually go way back to 1973 when writer Lois Duncan penned the page-turning novel.

The book, to say the least, was extremely different from our final product. To the point where Lois Duncan, who sold the rights for $150,000, refused to visit the set after reading the script and was mortified seeing what came to fruition on the screen.

On the matter, the late author commented, “There is no way I want to be part of desensitizing kids to violence and turning murder into a game to see who can scream the loudest.”

It’s very easy to become sympathetic to her thoughts and feelings on the subject when you learn her own daughter had been senselessly murdered by serial killer Paul Apodaca in July of 1989. The studio claimed they were unaware of this history when they made the film. In the end, both the original novel and film adaptations had their bright spots in their respective ways.

Here’s where the two paths split (and sometimes remain the same)…

For starters, this is no slasher novel. There’s no hook-wielding murderer. Hell, there’s not even a fisherman! That element of the story was conjured up by Kevin Williamson. As was the entire aspect of the story taking place in a small fishing town, inspired by his father, who was a fisherman. It is funny though, how reading the book with the movie in the back of your head alters your perceptions of everything. It still feels like the events are taking place in the movie’s locations. The feeling of Summer is still ever prevalent reading the book, making it a great read for this time of year.

Instead of a mysterious fisherman getting Goldberg-speared by Barry’s BMW, the partying teens hit a young boy on his bicycle in the middle of the night. The boy was riding the bike home after deciding mid-sleepover at a friend’s house that he wanted to go home. The teens didn’t dump his body into the ocean, as they did the fisherman, either. They never even stopped the car. It all happened quite quickly and tragically as Barry, ever the asshole in the book, just as well as the film, refused to stop the car or go back. After some conversation in the car that overall resembles the same type of moral debate in the film, the group decided what was done was done and they didn’t want to send Barry to jail for a crime he couldn’t fix.

Far worse, Barry convinces the group not to call for help until they are minutes down the road and free of the scene. Which, as it turns out, played a significant role in the boy not surviving.

“When you leave a man for dead, make sure that he’s REALLY dead!”

As we know, in the film, Ben Willis wasn’t dead when the crew dumped his body into the ocean. He even had the awareness to snatch Helen’s tiara under the water and scare the shit out of Barry when he came to retrieve it. But if you’re thinking the boy survived and exacted his revenge on our teens, you’d be mistaken. No Pet Sematary hijinks are going on in Lois Duncan’s novel, either. This kid died. And he’s the only death in the entire story… a body count of one. As previously stated, this is no slasher. But that doesn’t mean it’s not suspenseful.

Moving forward, the film very much colors my imagination of our main characters. I might be reading Barry, Helen, Julie, and Ray but I’m seeing Ryan Phillipe, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prinze Jr. For a movie that couldn’t be more different than its source material, it shockingly manages to resemble the characters from the book’s auras with impressive accuracy. Again, Barry is very much the rich, snobby little jerk that Ryan Phillipe portrayed on the screen. Julie, in either rendition, doesn’t have a ton of personality beyond being possibly the most moral of the group and carrying the most guilt. Albeit it useless moral guilt that accomplishes nothing other than to make her feel above the other teens in the group; like sending anonymous flowers to the kid’s funeral. “Oh gee…thanks! This solves everything. You’re a great person after all.”

Ray is still a bit of a mystery, abandoning Julie shortly after the incident to work odd jobs in California as he worked through his own guilt. When he returns, all that matters to him is winning her back. Only when he returns, he finds a version of Julie completely wrecked by guilt (much as she was in the film at this point) and dating a war veteran named “Bud.”

The real heavy lifting Duncan does in the novel that the film couldn’t match character-wise is within Helen’s character. She’s largely the same person we saw on screen only much more sympathetic. We spend a lot of time with her inner thoughts as a picture is painted of a girl who is embarrassed by her family’s financial situation and deeply driven to succeed so that she doesn’t end up like her sister. This is somewhat portrayed in the film but alongside her inner monologue, it feels much more personal and relatable here. Suffice it to say, she became the most interesting character of them all. Much of her plight is driven by her hateful sister, Elsa. Who they hilariously miscast with the gorgeous Bridgette Wilson-Sampras in the film. Here, Helen is driven to succeed come hell or high water and is an up-and-coming future star as an on-air reporter at the local television station. She stays at a posh apartment complex with a popular pool area, where she meets a character not seen in the film, named Collie. Collie is new to the area and immediately takes a liking to her. Helen, however, is madly in love and loyal to Barry.

Barry, however, does not feel the same about her. This is another aspect of the book that didn’t translate to the film. There’s a lot of background information on Barry’s motivations and future plans which we come to find out don’t include Helen. As she dotes over him and plans their future together, he’s often with other women, wishing he’d broken it off with her sooner. He feels suffocated by the slightest idea of commitment in part because of an overbearing mother he wants desperately to emancipate himself from… if only he weren’t tethered to her bank account.

The book opens itself with Julie finding a note in her mail with the dreaded message “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and subsequently reaching out to her old friends. Each of them is then contacted by this mystery party in a much more subdued manner than in the film; there are no dead bodies stuffed in trunks full of crabs that miraculously disappear in mere minutes in broad daylight without so much as a seafood smell being left behind. No characters are spinning dramatically in the street screaming “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?!??” No, this stalker is more of an “I left you an old newspaper clipping taped to your front door” kind of psychopath.

But they are not without violence.

“Oh, you got a letter? I GOT RUN OVER! Helen gets her hair chopped off. Julie gets a body in her trunk, and you got a letter? That’s balanced!”

Barry is hanging out in his frat house when he gets a call from the ever-needy Helen. Or so he thinks. The voice on the other end of the line tells him that they have proof of what happened that fateful night. But are willing to sell it to him for a price. What a relief. Whoever has been stalking them and leaving notes only wants money? Money, he can do. He agrees to meet him outside and as fireworks fill up the night sky, he is shot in the stomach; the bullet hitting his spine.

The trickle-down effects of this moment paint the rest of our story as Barry’s overprotective mother then takes control of his life. As Barry fights for his life in the hospital she blames Helen, whom she never wanted Barry to date anyway. Eventually, Helen relies on her new, doting friend Ollie for emotional support.

Meanwhile, Ray is still trying to win Julie back, despite her continuing to date Bud. With the attack on Barry frightening all of them, they start to desperately investigate who is behind it. Julie and Ray visit the boys’ parents (the Anne Heche scene in the film) to see if they are possibly behind this but are instead greeted with more guilt and misery. They learn the mother is in a mental hospital after blaming herself for her boy dying that night (she refused to pick him up from his friend’s home the night of the accident). The dad is there taking care of her, and the sister is left to deal with taking care of the home and bills all alone.

Maybe the biggest change of all is the upcoming twist. As Helen returns from a swim she finds her new friend Collie waiting for her in her apartment. He’s acting very suspicious and we quickly learn… it’s killer reveal time! Collie explains that he is the older brother of the little boy the group had accidentally killed. He had returned home from the war and wanted revenge on the teens who killed his brother and ruined his family. He tracked each of them down after realizing that one set of flowers sent to his brother’s funeral didn’t have a name on it. He found that odd and incriminating, so he simply asked the local florist who had sent them: Julie James. Collie then slipped the “I know what you did last summer” note into her mailbox and followed her next movements to discover the entire group was culpable.

But wait a second….

Didn’t I say Bud was the war veteran? Get ready for this….BUD IS COLLIE! Finkel is Einhorn! His little brother was unable to pronounce his full name, Collingsworth, as a kid, so he just called him Bud. And Bud was about to kill everyone. While the book doesn’t treat us to the great chase scene we get with the fisherman and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the film, the dialogue in this reveal scene is fascinating and we do get a bit of a slasher movie moment here. Helen escapes to the bathroom and locks the door. Everything goes silent before she starts hearing a strange noise and realizes that he is calmly taking the door off of its hinges. She’s able to escape by breaking a small window semi-high up in her apartment complex and climbing out of it. Meanwhile, Julie (who nobody can reach on the phone) prepares for her date that night with Bud.

Bud then shows up at Julie’s house and gives her the motive reveal speech as well before beginning to strangle her in her driveway. Just as she starts to go unconscious, Ray (who has cracked the case on his own) comes out of nowhere and beats the guy in the head with a flashlight. The cops show up and everyone lives. The group (including Barry, who has regained the use of his legs) agrees to break the pact and come clean to the police about everything and the book comes to a rather abrupt end.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is a very enjoyable, quick, and suspenseful read. Just don’t go into it expecting the ’90s teen slasher movie you’ve already got inside your head.

The post ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ – The Original Novel Was a Very Different Horror Story appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Hellboy) returns this summer with Duchess, a rated “R” action thriller from Saban Films that has received an official trailer this week.

Duchess comes to Digital and VOD on August 9, 2024.

In the film, “Duchess (Charlotte Kirk), a small-time crook, tries to enter the treacherous underworld of diamond trafficking and ends up left for dead when a deal goes wrong. Determined to seek retribution she launches into an unwavering pursuit for vengeance.”

Duchess is rated “R” for “Strong bloody violent content, pervasive language, some sexual content and brief drug use.”

Neill Marshall directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Charlotte Kirk.

Philip Winchester, Colm Meaney, Hoji Fortuna, Colin Egglesfield, Stephanie Beachum, Sean Pertwee, David Chevers, Boris Martinez, Alex Morgan, and Yan Tual also star.

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WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for the X trilogy.

Ambitious women are rarely judged kindly by history. Often called cruel or heartless, they’re punished for going after what they want in a way that men simply aren’t. Especially if they choose an unconventional life, eschewing the domestic roles we’ve been told to prize. Women who choose stardom are especially vilified – either picked apart for their physical appearance or for daring to show their authentic selves to the world. And heaven help them if they show any skin. Seductive women may rise to the top, but they do so with labels like harlot, temptress, floozy, and whore.

Bette Davis, one of Hollywood’s most ambitious women, spoke on this phenomenon saying, “In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.” This quote introduces Ti West’s MaXXXine, the concluding chapter in a trilogy exploring female ambition. Mia Goth plays both Pearl and Maxine, two women obsessed with international fame. Like many before them, both women are driven by an all-consuming desire to succeed and painted as monsters for daring to act on their own behalf.

The Preacher’s Daughter

‘X’

West opens X by introducing us to Maxine Minx in a Texas strip club. The freckle-faced actress does a line of cocaine and declares, “you’re a motherfuckin’ sex symbol,” while staring at herself in the dressing room mirror. She then grabs her suitcase and hits the road, off to film a porno on a rural farm. Her future fiancé Wayne (Martin Henderson) is excited to make a classy adult film and director RJ (Owen Campbell) intends to shoot it with arthouse style. The only fly in the ointment is Lorraine (Jenna Ortega), RJ’s skeptical girlfriend who bristles at the idea of participating in “smut.” But she changes her tune after watching Maxine and her co-star Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) find freedom in expressing their sexuality. They reject the shame society heaps on women for enjoying physical pleasure and refuse to be someone else’s idea of a “nice girl.” 

But Lorraine is not the only disapproving woman on the set. Staring from a nearby window is Pearl, an elderly recluse and lady of the house. She invites Maxine in for a glass of lemonade and the two stare at each other from opposite ends of the aging spectrum. Pearl remembers her time as a dancer and mourns the power granted by her youthful beauty. She warns Maxine not to take it for granted and later gazes longingly through the barn window, imagining herself as the star in an explicit scene. 

Though now in the waning years of her life, Pearl is still a sexual being and longs for Maxine’s freedom to express her desire. Her husband Howard (Stephen Ure) worries that intercourse will be too much for his heart and gently rejects her persistent advances. But we learn that Pearl has been taking matters into her own hands. Lorraine finds a partially clothed man chained in the basement whom Pearl has been using to fulfill her needs. Later that night, she sneaks into bed with Maxine and caresses her body, seemingly trying to recapture her own youth and beauty through the young woman’s skin.

Though pitiable in some ways, Pearl has become a monster. Enraged by the brazen youth and beauty on display, she unleashes her murderous rage on the cast and kills them all with Howard’s help. But their elderly bodies let them down and both succumb to the stress of these grisly kills. Howard suffers a fatal heart attack while moving a body and Pearl is thrown on the ground by the recoil of her own shotgun. When Maxine understandably refuses to help, the dying woman unleashes a tirade of shame and scorn. She calls Maxine a “deviant little whore” and warns that the would-be starlet will one day end up just like her. But Maxine has heard all of this before. She rejects Pearl’s cruel judgment  and crushes her head as she drives off into the sunrise. 

Though Pearl is the first film’s primary villain, another monster lurks in the shadows. As the story unfolds, we see snippets of a televangelist preacher raving about his lost daughter, a freckle-faced girl lured away from home. Though we never learn the details of this emancipation, a photo reveals this lost preacher’s daughter to be Maxine herself – her sensitivity to gawkers now making more sense. Raised in an evangelical church, she was likely taught that sexuality is a sin and beautiful women are not to be trusted. But now she’s found a home among people like her, a chosen family who view their bodies as gifts rather than liabilities. In an act of defiance, Maxine turns her father’s own mantra into a cry for freedom, insisting, “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” 

Pearl

‘Pearl’

West’s imaginative prequel Pearl reunites us with the titular killer in the prime of her life. We journey back to the year 1917 and watch as she languishes in the remote dreariness of her family’s farm. Though she dreams of one day joining a Hollywood chorus line, for now she must be content with performing for the animals as she slops out their food. With her husband fighting overseas and her father infirm, Pearl has no choice but to stay and help with the household chores, her own dreams buckling under the weight of responsibility. 

Pearl’s mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) is cruel and bitter, resenting her daughter’s optimistic ambition. She’s hidden her own fancy dresses away and made peace with a life of miserable devotion. But Pearl will not accept her mother’s life. This unfulfilled farmer’s daughter dreams of the day her parents will die and release her of this stifling obligation. She pins all of her hopes on an upcoming dance audition and begins making plans to run away. Like Maxine, she plans to abandon her home and become a star, rejecting a life of rigid control. When her mother forbids her from taking her shot, Pearl pushes her into the fire and leaves her to die. The subsequent murder of her own father speeds along this gruesome emancipation.   

Though Maxine’s deadly rendezvous with Pearl is still decades away, the younger woman’s phrase feels particularly apt. Pearl also refuses to accept a life she does not deserve – one in which she is expected to sacrifice her own dreams to take care of the home and her men. In a tear-filled monologue, she confesses to being glad she lost an earlier pregnancy and her fear of one day becoming a mother. Caring for a child would prevent her from following her dreams and Pearl does not want to be saddled with someone else’s needs. She is an ambitious woman who was born way too soon. In 1917, she simply does not have the freedom, mobility, and choice Maxine will later enjoy – and the pain of these limitations drives her to kill. 

When the big day arrives, Pearl gives it her all. Though she dances relatively well, we see that she is far from the world-renowned talent she will one day imply. She is summarily rejected and her story becomes one of bitter disappointment and shattered dreams. The producers are looking for a particular type of girl – one with the X factor, preferably blond – and no matter what Pearl does, she will never be right for this particular role. Her frustrating failure is indicative of the restrictive era. Decades later, Maxine will have many opportunities to audition for various roles and an agent to help navigate a powerful system. Though Maxine’s chance at stardom may be slim, for Pearl it is virtually nonexistent. The dance audition truly is her only means of escaping a life she neither wants nor deserves. Though nothing excuses her grisly string of murders, her motive for killing the cast and crew now becomes clear. Not only does she begrudge them their age and beauty, they are living out the dream she was denied. 

Maxine

‘MaXXXine’

Pearl’s failed audition mirrors the opening scene of MaXXXine, the concluding film of this progressive trilogy. Six years after the deaths of her friends and lovers, Maxine has made it to Hollywood and become a successful porn actress with hopes of breaking into mainstream film. Like Pearl, she performs before an ominous panel with a line of young hopefuls waiting outside. Fortunately, Maxine emerges with a happier outcome. Perhaps due to luck or years spent adjusting to the Hollywood machine, she wins the lead role in a horror film. 

But the future star is still haunted by memories of the woman she killed. She remembers the touch of Pearl’s greedy fingers and imagines her looming in distant windows. It’s likely that her dying words still ring in Maxine’s ears and she fears winding up old and alone – with nothing to show for her life but missed opportunities and bitter regret. On set, she meets her ambitious director, Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), also trying to prove herself in a male-dominated field. With brutal frankness, Bender advises her to cut out everything in her life except for the film – she will only have one shot at a breakout role – and it seems Maxine takes this cold guidance to heart.

But a shadow falls over her life as she begins to prepare. Not only does she receive footage of what is now being called the Texas Porn Star Massacre, someone is killing the people who orbit her life. We eventually learn that her televangelist father has returned, tracking down his wayward daughter to save her from a life of sin. Blind to his own hypocrisy, Ernest Miller (Simon Prast) plans to film himself performing an exorcism, believing this will give his daughter the stardom she’s always desired – but only on his terms. He hopes to publicly reject her sinful choices for the world to see and reify his insidious brand of patriarchal dominance. 

But the only sin Maxine has committed is the sin of living – a prescient phrase lifted from her audition monologue. She has found liberation in bodily autonomy and is no longer beholden to his oppressive beliefs. Miller sees his daughter’s rebellion as a threat to his entire system of power and can’t understand why anyone would reject his shame-based control. Surely it must be a monstrous demon tempting her away and not an understandable desire for freedom. His patented phrase now feels particularly ironic and we realize it’s his lifestyle she’s been trying to escape. Miller expects his daughter to return to his ultra-conservative home and revert to the dutiful “nice girl” who subjugates herself to men. But Maxine deserves a better life and she will do anything to escape his grasp.  

We leave Maxine as we first met her – doing cocaine and reminding herself that she is a star. Not only has she survived two murderous psychopaths, she’s fought tooth and nail to accomplish her goals. Though terrifying, it seems her encounters with Pearl and Miller have put this liberty into perspective. She’s well aware of how lucky she is and vows not to take a single moment for granted. It’s tempting to wonder where Pearl would end up if she were born as a part of Maxine’s generation. Would she also have found a way to leave her conservative family behind? Perhaps if given just a few more tries, she too could land a role that would be her big break. But Pearl is limited by the time in which she exists – not to mention a heavy dose of sadistic psychopathy. Though both women kill in pursuit of their dreams, their outcomes differ wildly in part due to the eras in which they exert their power. Pearl’s ambition turns her into a monster while Maxine’s determination makes her a star.

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Universal’s ballerina vampire horror movie Abigail arrives July 9 on Blu-ray and DVD from Universal, and we’ve learned today that the horror-comedy is also headed to Peacock.

Sink your teeth into Abigail, streaming exclusively on Peacock July 19. 

In addition to Abigail, Peacock will also be exclusively streaming additional Universal Pictures horror favorites, including Lisa Frankenstein and M3GAN (+ Unrated).  

Meagan Navarro wrote in her positive review here on Bloody Disgusting, “Radio Silence’s ballerina vampire movie is a bloody blast.” Her review continued, “It’s savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore, offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.”

And yes, Abigail takes place in the same universe as Radio Silence’s Ready or Not!

In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”

From Radio Silence—the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett behind the terrifying modern horror hits Ready or Not, 2022’s Scream and last year’s Scream VI—comes a brash, blood-thirsty new vision of the vampire flick, written by Stephen Shields (The Hole in the Ground, Zombie Bashers) and Guy Busick (Scream franchise, Ready or Not).

Abigail stars Melissa Barrera (Scream franchise, In the Heights), Dan Stevens (Gaslit, Legion), Kathryn Newton (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Freaky), William Catlett (Black Lightning, True Story), Kevin Durand (Resident Evil: Retribution, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Angus Cloud (Euphoria, North Hollywood) as the kidnappers and Alisha Weir (Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, Darklands) as Abigail.

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