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Sundance ’10: Ryan Daley Reflects Back on 6 Films of the Fest

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The Sundance Film Festival is traditionally a mixed bag, but this year’s Park City at Midnight line-up was easily one of the strongest I’ve ever seen. Almost all of the movies featured were in some way entertaining, and three of the films were downright excellent. Here’s how I rank the six horror movies I saw at this year’s festival.

Click here for all of this year’s Sundance news:


The audience at my midnight screening was initially enthusiastic about The Butcher Brothers’ most recent effort, but that enthusiasm soon gave way to disenchantment, and eventually scorn, as the directors took a fun sub-genre (the 70s exploitation film) and stomped all the life out of it. All but impossible to sit through.


Even high production values couldn’t save this one, a sci-fi drama that’s all over the place in terms of tone. Is it a semi-instructional film about how to raise a mutant baby? Or is it a lurid sex flick featuring human-on-mutant groin-slammin’? Hard to tell. A weird mash-up of genres that never quite congeals.


The definition of mediocrity stretched to its breaking point. A couple of amusing scenes try to carry the load, but with the majority of the movie buried under a hapless heap of “who cares?” plot developments, this is a flick that quickly wears out its welcome.


Ryan Reynolds rocks the screen hard in a singular, no-holds-barred performance. Some will question the ending (avoid all reviews if you plan on seeing it), but in the world of tightly-wound, independently financed thrillers, Buried knows no equal.


Like Martyrs, this is torture-porn for the intellectual set. Those who enjoy their cinematic brutality served up with a side of emotional realism are in for a real treat. Sometimes graphic, sometimes restrained, 7 Days is the perfect amalgam of gut-wrenching horror and high art.


After a slow and baggy set-up, director Adam Green really brings the pain for the full remaining hour of his winter extremes horror film, a truly harrowing experience that provokes hours of discussion once the credits have rolled. By the time I left the theater, my armrests were slick with hand sweat.

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‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Adds “Chucky” Actor Teo Briones and More to Lead Cast

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Chucky Actor Teo Briones
Pictured: Teo Briones in "Chucky" Season Two

The Final Destination franchise is returning to life with Final Destination: Bloodlines. With filming now underway, THR reports that three actors have joined the lead cast, including “Chucky” actor Teo Briones.

Brec Bassinger (“Stargirl”) and Kaitlyn Santa Juana (The Friendship Game) join Teo Briones, who played Junior Wheeler in season two of “Chucky,” as the leads in the sixth installment of the horror franchise.

Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein (Freaks) are directing the fresh installment that also includes Richard Harmon (“The 100”, Grave Encounters 2), Anna Lore, Owen Patrick Joyner, Max Lloyd-Jones (The Book Of Boba Fett), Rya Kihlstedt (Obi Wan Kenobi), and Tinpo Lee (The Manor) among the cast.

Production is now underway in Vancouver.

What can we expect from the upcoming Final Destination 6? Speaking with Collider, franchise creator Jeffrey Reddick offered up an intriguing (and mysterious) tease last year.

“This film dives into the film in such a unique way that it attacks it from a different angle so you don’t feel like, ‘Oh, there’s an amazing setup and then there’s gonna be one wrinkle that can potentially save you all that you have to kind of make a moral choice about or do to solve it.’ There’s an expansion of the universe that – I’m being so careful,” Reddick teased.

Reddick continued, “It kind of unearths a whole deep layer to the story that kind of, yes, makes it really, really interesting.”

Final Destination: Bloodlines is written by Lori Evans Taylor (“Wicked Wicked Games”) and Guy Busick (Scream), with Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home) producing.

Producers on the new movie for New Line Cinema also include Dianne McGunigle (Cop Car) as well as Final Destination producers Craig Perry and Sheila Hanahan Taylor.

This will be the sixth installment in the hit franchise, and the first in over ten years. Each film centers on “Death” hunting down young friends who survive a mass casualty event.

The latest entry is expected in 2025, coinciding with the original film’s 25th anniversary.

 

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