Horror Archives - Page 16 of 24 - StayTuned Magazine

AMC’s statement on Frank Darabont and “The Walking Dead”

July 28, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

This morning, AMC released this statement on Frank Darabont stepping down as showrunner for the hit series The Walking Dead, and answered some other questions about possible changes and replacements: “The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara, writer and executive producer, is expanding his responsibilities to assume the role of showrunner. AMC is grateful to executive producer, writer and pilot director Frank Darabont whose contributions to the success of The Walking Dead are innumerable. We continue to discuss his ongoing role with the series. Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead graphic novels, executive producer and writer on the series, will remain […]

VOD Spotlight: “Insidious”

July 13, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The creators of Saw and Paranormal Activity team up to reinvent the haunted-house genre for a new generation with Insidious, which pays tribute to such horror classics as The Exorcist, Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense. Renai (Rose Byrne) and her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) are unpacking boxes in their family’s new home when they first start to sense a sinister presence. Eerie events slowly escalate into supernatural attacks until one accident puts their son in a mysterious coma. When the family flees its ghost-ridden home and attempts to heal itself, Josh’s mother (Barbara Hershey) brings in a team of paranormal […]

VOD Spotlight: “Red Riding Hood”

June 14, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The story of Little Red Riding Hood has its origins in 14th-century European folk tales. In a time when dangerous and dark forests were a way of life, stories such as this kept children safely close to home at night. The story and others like it also served as warnings to young women to be careful of men — the term “wolf” surviving to this day to describe a predatory male. Moving from the wolf to the werewolf, as the film Red Riding Hood does, we have a monster that can be destroyed if it falls in love with a […]

VOD Spotlight: “The Rite”

May 17, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

In 2007, there were reports that the Vatican was planning an initiative to install an exorcist in every diocese in the world. Matt Baglio, a reporter living in Rome, was intrigued by this and met with Father Gary Thomas, a priest undergoing exorcism training. He shadowed Fr. Thomas through six months of training, “One of the reasons why I wrote the book the way that I did,” he explains, “is to say, ‘This is the reality of exorcism as the Church teaches it.’” The result was the book The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, on which the film […]

“Wimpy Kid” star trades laughs for scares in “The Haunting Hour”

April 5, 2011 StayTuned Staff

What’s a nice young man like Robert Capron doing trying to scare the socks off people? The 12-year-old actor, who plays goofy sidekick Rowley in the highly successful Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies — the second installment of which, Rodrick Rules, recently opened No. 1 at the box office — eschews his fun-loving persona for his role as Marty in “Catching Cold,” the latest episode of R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour. It premieres April 9 on The Hub. While Rowley never met a mother-son dance he didn’t like, and is probably a much more loyal friend than titular wimp […]

Preview: Mega Python vs. Gatoroid

January 29, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

By Jeff Pfeiffer I was somewhat skeptical when I read Syfy’s press release claiming that its latest original movie, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, was “ripped from the headlines.” Until I saw this headline yesterday. Syfy couldn’t have asked for better timing for that encounter. And it is true that the general starting plot point of the film — non-native pet pythons being released into the Everglades and causing havoc on the ecosystem — is in fact happening in Florida. But from there, as you have come to expect from Syfy originals, the headlines from which the story is ripped are […]

VOD Spotlight: Jovovich makes “Resident Evil” franchise her own

January 27, 2011 Jeff Pfeiffer

The Resident Evil films may be based on a video game, but the franchise plays by its own rules and has become famous for unexpectedly killing off major characters without warning. Not so for Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, who now appears in Resident Evil: Afterlife. “Alice is the ultimate heroine,” producer Don Carmody says. “She‘s a combination of Wonder Woman and Indiana Jane and she‘s out there kicking ass and taking names.”

VOD Spotlight: “Devil” closes in

December 21, 2010 Jeff Pfeiffer

Devil is the first installment of The Night Chronicles, a series of terrifying stories conceived by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) that he turns into movies with up-and-coming filmmakers. As these talented writers and directors bring Shyamalan’s tales to life, he collaborates with them on new ways to scare us all. Things get off to a creepy start with Devil, in which five people trapped in an elevator come to realize that one of them is the devil. As those on the outside try in vain to free them, the remaining passengers realize that the only way to survive […]

R.L. Stine offers family frights in “The Haunting Hour”

December 20, 2010 StayTuned Staff

By Stacey Harrison Back when R.L. Stine was known as Jovial Bob Stine and writing joke books for a living, not many people could have foreseen that he would one day revolutionize the young-adult horror genre. Not that there really was much of a young-adult horror genre before he wrote Blind Date back in 1986. One day an editor friend of Stine’s took him to lunch and told him she needed a horror novel for teens. Though he’d always been a fan of the genre, he’d never considered writing it himself, so he researched what was out there and came […]

AMC pumps life into zombie genre with “The Walking Dead”

October 31, 2010 StayTuned Staff

By Stacey Harrison Let’s face it, the words “zombie apocalypse” aren’t often associated with quality drama. Despite the respect paid to the works of Night of the Living Dead auteur George A. Romero, who never fails to infuse sharp social commentary and allegory into the genre he essentially created, it’s more often than not the terrain for hackneyed horror flicks filled with excessive gore and scantily clad coeds. For every Dawn of the Dead that brings credibility, there’s a Zombie Strippers lurking to take it all away. As for its TV prospects, the horror genre overall has not gained much […]