Offspring

It doesn't surprise me to learn that Lucky McKee and Angela Bettis will be working together again. This duo has worked on a variety of projects together, most notably the quiet classic known as May. (And if you think I'm being sarcastic, try again. May is, in my opinion, one of the strangest and most captivating horror films of the past twenty years.) But this latest is a fairly unexpected one...

So remember that adaptation of Jack Ketchum's Offspring that hit the DVD shelves a few months back? I thought it had some ... problems, but overall I found it a fairly creepy and effectively nasty little indie. Well, now it seems that McKee and Bettis are re-teaming to do a follow-up called Offspring: The Woman. According to this handy Fango blog, Lucky will direct, Angela will star, and Ketchum himself will (once again) pen the screenplay. So if you're keeping score that's Off Season (Book #1, no movie as of yet), Offspring (Book #2, Movie #1), and then Offspring: The Woman (Book #0, Movie #2). But hey, at least the original author is involved, and that's what's important. (Read Off Season, horror fans. It's some rough, tough stuff.)

And hey, cool. Pollyanna McIntosh will be returning for the sequel. That's cool too. For more on this brand-new sequel news, check out the Fangoria blog.

Best of the New Releases: Trick 'r Treat, The Children, The Thaw, Not Quite Hollywood
Okay, okay, you've had Trick 'r Treat bludgeoned into your conscious to no end lately. Well now is your chance to finally see Michael Dougherty's fabled film. I can't speak for what's on the DVD or Blu-ray, but the film itself is a wonderful tribute to all things Halloween. I saw it for the first time a week ago (review) and I'm already planning on popping in the Blu tonight.

This October's haul from Ghost House Underground isn't quite as large as the eight or so films they put out last year, but what they've lost in quantity they've made up for in quality (plus all four titles are available on Blu-ray). For starters we have The Children, a film I think can't be improved upon (review). Next up is The Thaw, a nice bit of eco-terror starring Val Kilmer and Aaron Ashmore about the discovery of a mammoth and the deadly parasites frozen inside it. Mark A. Lewis' film is basically a proposition of how to remake The Thing without remaking The Thing, but that's not entirely a bad thing considering how excellent the formula of frost-bound bio-horror is. I wouldn't call The Thaw a blind buy, but it's worth a look down the line.

Ghost House Pictures may not win over hardcore horror fans in movie theaters, what with all the PG-13 Grudge filled Messenger Boogeymen (a few more in the vein of Drag Me To Hell couldn't hurt, though), but their DVD branding Ghost House Underground is a different story. Created in 2008 as a collaboration with Lionsgate Home Entertainment, you may remember last October GHU went all in with a round of eight titles to prove to fans their intent to give straight-to-DVD sequels and independent gems a safe haven in the retail world. Greg Bishop's blast of fun Dance of the Dead was easily the cream of the crop, but No Man's Land: Rise of the Reeker and The Substitute are both solid titles that may have gotten the shaft in American markets were it not for GHU.

Which brings us to 2009 and the first batch of titles announced for this October on both DVD and Blu-ray: Seventh Moon, The Thaw, Offspring, and The Children., all four of which are must-see titles for me. Despite playing to mixed acclaim at a few festivals, I'm looking forward to the Amy Smart-starring Seventh Moon, directed by Eduardo Sanchez. Even putting aside his contribution to The Blair Witch Project, Sanchez's first solo film Altered banked enough credit with me to give him the benefit of the doubt on his China set haunter. I haven't heard early talk about either The Thaw or Offspring, but the former has Val Kilmer in it and is about a new biological terror that squirms out of a frozen core sample while the latter is an adaptation of Jack Ketchum's novel about marauding cannibals. Can't complain too much on those two fronts. Then of course, we have Tom Shankland's The Children.