Movies
Comic-Con ’11: Kevin Smith Teases Hall H With ‘Red State’
He may have already taken it on a national tour, but Kevin Smith proved there’s still plenty of audience interest in Red State (review). Thousands of fans packed out Hall H at Comic Con this afternoon for Smith’s annual Q&A where he talked about his first foray into the horror genre and showed five minutes of “spoileriffic footage.”
The writer/director said ‘Red State’ was his attempt at trying to make a movie like Quentin Tarantino and something “outside my comfort zone.”
“Until ‘Red State’ I didn’t have the balls to do it and try to make a movie like Quentin or the Coen Brothers,” he said.
“‘Red State’ was my way to homage those types of movies and what they do.
“It was so fucking artistically liberating man, because it’s the movie no one expects from you.
“It was like I was a talking dog, people would be like ‘stop the pop culture references, people are dying!’
“You’re not supposed to pump your own shit, but it’s fucking dope.”
Smith took the unconventional approach of self-distributing the film by playing it at select cinemas nationally with Q&A’s after each screening. The filmmaker said although ‘Red State’ has been released outside of the “studio system”, it has found an audience.
“I’ve been making movies for two decades man and I know one thing – people will see it eventually,” he said.
There are several dates still on the ‘Red State’ tour and a two week run at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema, Los Angeles. Smith said the film has already “cleared almost a million bucks” in merchandise alone. Inspired by religious fundamentalists, the film was made for $4 million and stars John Goodman, Kyle Gallner, Michael Angarano and Melissa Leo.
Smith said the profit from ‘Red State’ will allow him to finance his final film – hockey comedy ‘Hit Somebody’ – which he estimates will cost between 15 – 20 million. It’s set to start filming at the beginning of 2012 in Detroit.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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