Ahead of The Toxic Avenger‘s Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con tonight, Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting are excited to announce that tickets for the film are now on sale!

Grab your tickets to see The Toxic Avenger in theaters on August 29!

Primetime Emmy-winning actor Peter Dinklage stars as the Toxic Avenger in director Macon Blair’s new movie, a fresh take on the cult classic franchise from the indie gods at Troma.

Like Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3 before it, The Toxic Avenger will be released UNRATED in theaters nationwide, with not a single moment of insanity cut out of Blair’s wild crowd-pleaser.

When janitor Winston Gooze is exposed to a catastrophic toxic accident, he’s transformed into a new kind of hero: The Toxic Avenger. Now, Toxie must rise from outcast to savior, taking on ruthless corporate overlords and corrupt forces who threaten his son, his friends, and his community. In a world where greed runs rampant… justice is best served radioactive.

With 25 reviews so far, The Toxic Avenger is 92% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes!

The Toxic Avenger is distributed by Cineverse, produced by Legendary Entertainment.

The post ‘The Toxic Avenger’ – Tickets On Sale Now for Unrated Movie Starring Peter Dinklage! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Lionsgate is sticking with Stephen King. The Long Walk is set to release this fall, and they’re just optioned rights to adapt King’s 1999 novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

The company has enlisted Strange Darling filmmaker and The Long Walk scribe JT Mollner to write and direct the adaptation, THR reports today.

The novel follows the harrowing survival story of a nine-year-old girl named Trisha as she struggles to stay alive after getting lost in the woods alone. With only her Walkman radio playing baseball games to keep her company, the girl’s love of pitcher Tom Gordon begins to manifest in hallucinations that may save her life. 

“JT is a filmmaker we believe has a bright future,” said Lionsgate Motion Picture Group president Erin Westerman. “Throughout his work, he creates characters, and especially young characters, that are so compelling, heartbreaking, and emotional that they pop off the screen. And of course, that’s what Stephen King does on the page as well. The story of survival and perseverance in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is timeless. We’ve loved this tale for a long time, and JT is the perfect choice to adapt and direct this King fan favorite.”

Strange Darling producer Roy Lee will reteam with Mollner for Tom Gordon. Also producing will be Christine Romero, Ryan Silbert, and Andrew Childs. Nathan Kahane, who is transitioning from his post as Lionsgate Motion Picture Group president to independent producer, will also join the project in a producer’s capacity. Meredith Wieck will oversee the project for Lionsgate alongside Pavan Kalidindi.

This isn’t the first attempt at launching an adaptation of Tom Gordon off the ground; a previous version of this project was announced in 2020 with Christy Hall (Netflix’s “I Am Not Okay With This”) and Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here) attached.

If you’re still lost in the woods on The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, revisit the Losers’ Club episode where Losers Jenn Adams, Michael Roffman, Dan Caffrey, and Justin Gerber swat the blood-thirsty mosquitoes buzzing around Stephen King’s 1999 survival horror novel.

Stay tuned.

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Body horror is on a hot streak lately, but leave it to Detention director Joseph Kahn to forge his own path. Ick, the filmmaker’s latest, brings the carnage and comedy in spades with an energetic pop punk ode to retro creature features.

Fathom Entertainment brings Ick to select theatres in New York and Los Angeles for a one-week theatrical run starting Thursday, July 24, and expands to theaters nationwide July 27-29.

Ick stars Brandon Routh as Hank, a former high school football star turned science teacher dealing with life’s disappointments when the plant-based “Ick” that’s long plagued the town suddenly becomes far more aggressive and rampant. It’s the type of fast-spreading alien threat that calls to mind films like The Blob, but with a contemporary spirit and sense of humor, especially when it comes to skewering the generational divide. 

That retro monster movie meets modern comedy presents a ton of pop punk fun and provides an interesting shift in the body horror subgenre’s fascination with aging.

Kahn, speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, explains, “There’s a piece of me that just loves the movies from the ’40s, with the clever scripts and the speed of the dialogue and things like that. It’s kind of a lost art form, and it’s just a tone I just love making. The funny thing is, when it comes to horror movies, there’s a lot of body horror these days, and Ick is a body horror, right? But the funny thing is, a lot of body horror is about aging. But in Ick, aging actually has nothing to do with body horror!”

“That’s the comedy. The body horror comes from another place,” Kahn continues. “We treat the aging part of it with a sense of humor and satire.”

Star Brandon Routh, who previously showcased his comedic chops in projects like Scott Pilgrim and “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” gets to really play up the comedy here as Hank. Exploring the humor was a significant part of Ick‘s appeal for the actor, and it also had him reflecting on previous roles.

“It’s very much on the page,” Routh said of Ick‘s comedy. “That’s one of the reasons why I really was attracted to the movie, because humor is always what I’m looking to do more of in every project that I can. Speaking with Joseph, he really champions that. The comedy that was in there was a part of it, and how important it was to the tone of the movie. I played a character somewhat like this in Dylan Dog, but I was too young to understand the edginess. It was fine, but if I were doing Dylan now, it’d be even better.

“But I was able to revisit that a little bit, though they’re very different characters. But the kind of anti-hero, the begrudging, sarcastic guy, grumbling under his breath. I found a grounded place in that for me as I got older and really settled into him. It was fun to live in that space and do humor, adding some little bits here and there.”

Kahn chimes in, “You actually added a really great ad lib. At the end, when they throw the mail at you, and you miss it. He goes, ‘I thought you were a football player,’ and Hank goes, ‘Quarterback.’ That’s an improv from Brandon.”

If it’s not already clear, Hank is the opposite of Steve McQueen cool when it comes to horror movie heroes. Despite life’s constant setbacks and his hapless personality, Hank is an unflappably nice guy.

“I think music probably is one of the saving graces,” Routh says of Hank’s pure heart. “I mean literally for him. And his connection to the past. The past is good and bad; it’s what we make of it, and how we view that story, which leads us into the future. Hank’s just been living in the past, and the possibility of Grace (Malina Weissman) being a family, of having some kind of link outside of himself, rekindles his heart, and the hope that he thought of the greatness of when he was in high school was not just about him. It’s about connecting to people, and he re-engages with that. It allows him to have that heroic bit of him still reignited, but in a wiser, more mature way.”

While the stacked soundtrack is sure to have Millennials bopping along, there was really only one key track that was vital to Kahn’s film. It also highlights his unique approach to the film.

Kahn explains, “The only must-have was Creed, because there’s literally a plot point that revolves around this. It wasn’t just an experiment of throwing in pop punk tracks. It’s a story about aging. It’s a story about Millennials getting old because a lot of these songs are 20 years old. You know what 20 years is. That’s a generation.”

The filmmaker continues, “There are two versions of this movie: there’s a version that Millennials watch, and there’s a version that Gen Z watches. I think the younger people will see it as a straight horror film with comedy in it. I think older people will see it as a comedy with some horror elements. One of the horror elements is that you’re aging, you know. It’s that you listen to all this music, and he’s stuck in time. He’s a fish out of water, and one of the things that you do when you get older is you recognize the things that you want out of life may not have worked out exactly as you did when you were younger. That’s just part of growing up. You don’t get to be Tom Brady. You didn’t become a millionaire. You didn’t get everything you wanted. You didn’t marry the hottest girl in school and retain her, and stuff like that.”

“But you know what you do,” the director continues. “You find something new to love, and it could be a child, it could be a person. It could be a gift. With Hank’s world, with falling in with his baby daughter. The entire question of whether it’s his daughter or not doesn’t really matter now. He’s got something to give, something to love, something to get passed down. Millennials accept that.

“This movie is both depressing, but then also uplifting because it makes you feel old… but it also makes you feel good.”

The post How Joseph Kahn’s ‘Ick’ Sets Itself Apart from the Current Body Horror Trend [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Award-winning French actress Noémie Merlant (Baby Ruby, Portrait of a Lady on Fire) is unleashing raucous revenge in horror-comedy The Balconettes, and the energetic trailer has arrived ahead of the film’s release from The Forge. 

The limited theatrical run for The Balconettes kicks off with a week of screenings at the IFC Center in New York City and the Landmark’s Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles from August 22 through August 28, followed by a sustained release in additional markets.

Merlant doesn’t just topline the film; The Balconettes marks her sophomore directorial effort. Merland also co-wrote the horror-comedy with Pauline Munier and Portrait of a Lady on Fire filmmaker Céline Sciamma.

The film follows three roommates gleefully meddling in the lives of their neighbors from their Marseilles balcony during a sweltering heat wave, until a late-night drink spirals into a bloody confrontation. 

Souheila Yacoub (Dune: Part Two, Climax), Sanda Codreanu (Call My Agent), and Lucas Bravo (Emily in Paris) also star.

“It’s such a joy to know that The Balconettes is being released in the United States, the country of cinema,” Merlant says. “Sharing the film there feels deeply meaningful to me, because so much of my love for storytelling was shaped by American film culture. To see this strange, fearless little movie find its audience in such a historic space for cinema is an emotional milestone. This is a film we made with our hearts and our guts: together, as a team, and in close collaboration with Céline Sciamma. It’s a love cry for creative freedom, for genre-mixing, for bold ideas and joyful chaos.

“But at its core, it’s a film about sisterhood, and a scream against the patriarchy: against all the forces that try to shame, silence, and control us. It’s a wild ride: violent, funny, tender, and unruly. My hope is that it makes people feel a little more free, and a little less alone.”

“The Balconettes doesn’t just play with genre, it detonates it,“ says Mark Sayre, CEO of The Forge. “Noémie [Merlant] has made a film that’s as uncontainable as the women at its center: wild, funny, furious, and alive with risk. We couldn’t look away, and we didn’t want to. Releasing this movie feels less like a business decision and more like a dare. One we’re proud to take.”

Watch the infectious trailer for the upcoming summer horror-comedy now.

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Slaterverse Pictures and Black Fawn Films have unveiled the atmospheric new trailer and theatrical poster for The Undertone ahead of its sold-out world premiere at Fantasia.

Nina Kiri (The Handmaid’s Tale, Fingernails), Michèle Duquet (The Virgin Suicides, Goosebumps), and Kris Holden-Ried (Underworld: Awakening, The Umbrella Academy) star.

The Undertone follows the host of an ‘all-things-creepy’ podcast who moves into her dying mother’s house to be her primary caregiver. When she receives audio recordings of a young pregnant couple experiencing paranormal noises, she realizes the woman’s story mirrors her own. Each new recording scratches at her sanity, drawing her into a fate she cannot escape.

The new horror movie marks the feature film debut of writer/director Ian Tuason.

“I think what makes this movie powerful, beyond its elements of horror, is the deep and vulnerable place it came from,” explains star Nina Kiri. “It takes a lot of courage to write something based on a painful and terrifying experience. Ian’s openness, combined with the entire crew’s receptivity, created not only an amazing experience for me, but also an important and compelling story.”

“This film was born from the grief and love I carried for my mom in her final days,“ explains Tuason. “To return home to Montreal where I was born and world premiere this film for Fantasia audiences – it feels like things have come full circle in the most magical way.“

The Undertone is produced by Dan Slater and Cody Calahan and is executive produced by Chad Archibald, Daril Fannin, Brit MacRae, Anthony Eu, Douglas Lee, Al Akdari, Charles Bern, Matthew Sterling, David Sproat, and Ian Tuason. The production is a first-time collaboration between Black Fawn Films, Slaterverse, and Kino Studio.

Stay tuned for more on The Undertone and our coverage out of Fantasia. In the meantime, check out the eerie trailer and poster below.

The post ‘The Undertone’ Trailer Plunges Podcaster into Paranormal Nightmare Ahead of Fantasia Premiere appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Freddie Prinze Jr. made a bold claim during the premiere of the I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel. On Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers death scene, he gushed: “I genuinely mean this: I think it’s one of the best death scenes in the history of horror films.” While her actual death scene appears mostly offscreen, behind a wall of rubber tires, I would argue that he likely meant her chase scene. It remains the most heart-pounding and all-time best chase scene in slasher history, outpacing the likes of Laurie Strode in Halloween and Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Chase scenes are as old as movies themselves. The first horror movie, 1896’s The Haunted Castle, features rudimentary scares and mechanics that would later become integral pieces to horror movies of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, from Nosferatu to Dracula and Frankenstein. 1942’s Cat People pairs an early example of a “chase” scene and one of the first jump scares, with the bus on the street scene. As Alice (Jane Randolph) makes her way through the dark New York City Streets, Irena (Simone Simon) pursues on foot in her leopard form. She stays just out of frame as the camera intensifies and pans behind Alice until BAM! the bus pulls up to the curb. 

While these films are far from being slashers, they did offer the tools filmmakers would later use for such landmark releases as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978) that would become the gold standards of what tense chase scenes out to be. While Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) ran for her life by jumping through a farmhouse window and down a long, winding driveway, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) screamed her lungs out as she darted across the street to the Doyle House. “Tommy, it’s me!” she howled into the night air, as Michael Myers (Nick Castle) stalked her in suburbia. These grandfather slasher films cemented the chase scene as an essential piece to the slasher puzzle, including a masked killer and the Final Girl archetype.

In the next two decades, slashers offered up numerous chase scenes worthy of an induction into the Chase Scenes Hall of Fame. Those films include A Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, Curtains, Blood Rage, numerous genre sequels, and various odds and ends from big budget and smaller pictures. There’s an endless supply of chase scenes during the slasher boom of the 1980s and the slasher comeback of the late ‘90s – but none broke the model and reset the gold standard quite like I Know What You Did Last Summer. 

On July 4th, Helen Shivers (Gellar) attends the beauty pageant to pass the torch to the next lucky young lady and witnesses Barry’s (Ryan Phillippe) death in the balcony. After a police officer investigates, he offers Helen a ride home and runs into The Fisherman pretending to have car trouble. The cop becomes gutted by The Fisherman’s shiny, sharp hook, and the chase scene is on.

Helen busts out the back passenger widow of the cop car with the heel of her pump, crawls out the back, and darts through the dark streets, supplying plenty of spooky silhouette scenes to build mood and tension. Music going full throttle, the chase to the Shiver’s department store is scene enough to make it iconic on its own but it’s far from over.

After Elsa (Bridgette Wilson) meets a grisly fate, the chase picks back up after The Fisherman leaps out from underneath a plastic sheet after pretending to be a mannequin. Helen then makes her way upstairs to a second-floor window where she leaps backwards into a dumpster. She climbs her way out and shuffles between back alleyways to her demise behind a wall of rubber tires. The local band marches by, and combined with a fireworks display, no one can hear her scream.

The anatomy of this chase scene can be broken into several parts. The character of Helen, owed to Gellar’s magnetic, charming performance, quickly endears her to the audience. While we don’t understand her relationship with her sister, we come to know her through the dynamic with Barry, Ray (Prinze Jr.), and Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) a year removed since killing a man. Then, there’s how the chase scene is built – from an initial chase to slowly unraveling tension through various quieter set pieces inside the department store to a emotional, mid-chase reveal. When you think she might live, she is slaughtered just out of eyesight from the crowd. Without one section, the chase scene would not be as intensely effective as it is.

There are very few chase scenes before or since that have even reached partial icon status. Scream 2 comes close with the Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) chase through the sound booth, as does Sasha’s (Tare Reid) epic stalking in Urban Legend. A few others at the turn of the 21st Century include Valentine, Cherry Falls, House of Wax, High Tension, and When a Stranger Calls. Throughout the next few decades, we’ve shockingly not had a single chase scene to even compete with I Know What You Did Last Summer, even though films do continue to include chase scenes of varying lengths and effectiveness – The Strangers: Prey at Night, Freaky, Halloween Kills, Fear Street, Happy Death Day, and Totally Killer.

Kevin Williamson, the writer behind I Know What You Did Last Summer, understood the assignment in writing 2022’s Sick, which is basically one entire chase scene. The problem is two-fold there: not one chase scene rises above the others, and it’s a streaming-only release. As such, the film never quite got its due with the general public and has since fallen by the wayside for greater recognition.

More recently, Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes (written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy) spotlights one of the stronger chase scenes. After discovering the killer in her closet, Ally (Olivia Holt) and work colleague Jay (Mason Gooding) are hunted out onto the street below all the way to the local carnival – where Ally fights off Heart Eyes on the merry go ‘round. Yet it doesn’t achieve the same level of suspense as its predecessor. It’s still a worthy contender for the Chase Scenes Hall of Fame, though.

Ironically, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer fails the general chase scene assessment. Numerous partial chases and references to Helen Shivers does not equal an icon-level chase scene. Tasked with one job, they did not deliver. But that’s the struggle of being a fan of the original film. Nothing ever comes quite close enough.

In over 100 years of horror movies, particularly the slasher variety, I Know What You Did Last Summer remains the single best example of a nail-biting chase scene that lives up to its full potential. It’s an unexpected thrill ride that keeps the audience on their toes every step of the way. When you think Helen Shivers just might survive, the chase picks up speed again to the heart-rending finale. She might die by the hands of the Fisherman, but she lives on in our hearts.

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