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The Nothingness said:
Along with the Warner Bros. Mummy movie, there is a Faces of Death remake coming out later this month. This version will follow a narrative where a social media moderator has to deal with a group reenacting the original movie's murders.
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Wasn’t the original movie just documentary footage?
 
Alright guys I saw Hunting Matthew Nichols. What an underrated little movie. Spoiler free ahead. The movie stars Miranda Macdougall as Tara Nichols, a woman on the hunt for her missing brother who disappeared 20 years ago along with his friend. She's making a documentary about finding out what happened to him and his case. If this sounds familiar at all, it's basically the same plot of Shelby Oaks verbatim. However, where Shelby Oaks is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, Hunting Matthew Nichols is....well it's not that. It evokes a lot of inspiration from Lake Mungo. While it never reaches those highs, I actually quite like the plot. I think there's clever things working under the story's hood here. It also helps this is a very restrained movie and let's the horror of the circumstances do some of the heavy lifting, which I will always respect. Miranda also puts in a really damn good performance.

However, the movies biggest shortcoming all comes down to technicals. Found footage in my opinion shouldn't be as clean as this movie looks at times. It completely sucks me out of the movie because how of high definition the camera is. The real thing that crippled the movie though is SOUND EDITING. Fire that man. Ban him from the industry. I practically left the movie theater with hearing loss because random things like title cards absolutely BOOM for no reason. Not jump scares either. Things like title and time cards would have absolutely blaring sound effects. The musical score is no better. It's very actiony for a relatively melodramatic movie that at best is ill fitting and at worst, will suck you out of the experience.

That being said, I think this will not break mainstream consciousness but it's a fun little movie and I recommend watching if you liked something like Lake Mungo. Maybe on streaming though where hopefully the audio is adjusted. I think it's a solid movie and if found footage is your schtick you should give it a watch. I think it's much better than Undertone and Shelby Oaks which it is apparently being compared to. Those movies failed in my opinion to live up to their premise and don't have any really decent acting moments to speak of. Whereas Matthew Nichols, I think succeeds in ways those movies never did.
 
Party Hat Wurmple said:
Alright guys I saw Hunting Matthew Nichols. What an underrated little movie. Spoiler free ahead. The movie stars Miranda Macdougall as Tara Nichols, a woman on the hunt for her missing brother who disappeared 20 years ago along with his friend. She's making a documentary about finding out what happened to him and his case. If this sounds familiar at all, it's basically the same plot of Shelby Oaks verbatim. However, where Shelby Oaks is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, Hunting Matthew Nichols is....well it's not that. It evokes a lot of inspiration from Lake Mungo. While it never reaches those highs, I actually quite like the plot. I think there's clever things working under the story's hood here. It also helps this is a very restrained movie and let's the horror of the circumstances do some of the heavy lifting, which I will always respect. Miranda also puts in a really damn good performance.
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I couldn't find where to watch this for free. Doesn't seem to be on the big sites?
 
Kofi Drinka said:
I couldn't find where to watch this for free. Doesn't seem to be on the big sites?
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It's new. Gonna have to wait a little bit. Heck, I don't really even think a pirated version is gonna be that bad. It's really a movie with a decent script marred with bad production. I think it does some clever things that make it a recommendation in my book, but I might be overselling it. I think the problem is horror this year has been limited to well....crap. So this stands out quite a bit.
 
Party Hat Wurmple said:
It's new. Gonna have to wait a little bit. Heck, I don't really even think a pirated version is gonna be that bad. It's really a movie with a decent script marred with bad production. I think it does some clever things that make it a recommendation in my book, but I might be overselling it. I think the problem is horror this year has been limited to well....crap. So this stands out quite a bit.
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I found a pirated version but the hosting sucked.
 
konga.jpg

So there's this little ape named "Konga" and this scientist with an experimental growth serum. Yes, the scientist says that the growth serum will make KONGA a "KING" (his choice of words). You know where this is going: little Konga is transformed by the growth serum into...

OIP.webp

a moderately-sized gorilla. He's about the size of a guy wearing a gorilla costume. Not small! He used to be a chimp, but that's nitpicking.

Late in the film, he's injected with more of it and grows some more. You think King Kong was big? Well, Konga is ALMOST as big, depending on the shot.

During the climax, Konga approaches Big Ben, but it's not really big enough for him to scale, so he stands sort of near it.
 
I think it's tedious that things are remade to undeath, but here's an open genuine question, because I can't be arsed making a thread, for anyone here, and to keep THIS thread trucking: what would you imagine a remake of An American Werewolf in London to be like, or, alternative question, would you like to see the flipside: An English Werewolf in New York?
 
Wot Zit Too Yah0996 said:
I think it's tedious that things are remade to undeath, but here's an open genuine question, because I can't be arsed making a thread, for anyone here, and to keep THIS thread trucking: what would you imagine a remake of An American Werewolf in London to be like, or, alternative question, would you like to see the flipside: An English Werewolf in New York?
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I will now remind them that "An American Werewolf in Paris" was a thing that happened.
 
Wot Zit Too Yah0996 said:
I think it's tedious that things are remade to undeath, but here's an open genuine question, because I can't be arsed making a thread, for anyone here, and to keep THIS thread trucking: what would you imagine a remake of An American Werewolf in London to be like, or, alternative question, would you like to see the flipside: An English Werewolf in New York?
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Nonserious answer is that Wolfen is a pretty good Werewolf in New York setup, and a very good film in it's own right.

Doomer answer: I don't think AWIL would be executed any better than anything else in the current climate. It'd be turned into some menstrual or trans allegory. To do it well would require the nonexistent combo of a talented director and writer, some of the best implemented CGI in the history of cinema (the creature effects will not be practical and the industry is completely incapable of naturalistic looking action CGI), and an audience that understands horror enough to not find the concept "lame" and "unrelatable". The horror would need to be done straight to a degree that is simply unmarketable.

It could be made like an A24 film, but if you want cool busy street action scenes, maybe quadruple the budget, at which point it'll be expected to make a box office return and will be meddled with. Expect the usual: punks forming a "chosen family", retro synth, choreographed music video action sequence, flavour of the month actors who can't emote to save their lives, total lack of gravitas, fucked up tone. If it was set in a different city, I don't think even the "film it in south-east Asia and do crazy shit" avenue is open any more since their HDI has gone through the roof since the 1970s days of making a feature-complete action flick on no budget. It's still an option but the tourist will have to be white and this is modern Hollywood. Maybe the American deep south would be cool, and could provide a lot of value in the cinematography and sense of place, but we're still talking modern Hollywood here. I'd also like Africa as a setting for something like this, as you could dig into some interesting superstition/folklore. Amsterdam would also be a fun as hell location if you want to lean into comedy a little more. Englishman/American abroad is such a classical cinematic premise that I do feel we've been robbed of the theme as of late (outside of a million romcoms) due to the need to make everything transatlantic. I could absolutely see it done as some Euro traveller visiting the Appalachian trail or touristing in Florida and having a bad swamp experience.

As for directors: Neil Marshall might have done a good job at one point but he's washed. Leigh Whannell has my admiration for what he did in Upgrade but ehh. Ben Wheatley might be too trashy at this point. Gareth Edwards, Alex Garland, Gareth Evans(?), Richard Stanley (RIP), is Luke Sparke ready yet? After seeing Nosferatu, I don't think Robert Eggers has a clue what he is doing. It'd have to be one of these types of plucky and genre-aware people who could commit fully to a passion project. Zero idea about writers, and frankly I don't trust them. No idea about actors, I don't really care about any of them and I find the fanbase and marketing aspect of casting to be tawdry.

If I had to force a constructive answer, it'd be to find some passionate schlock auteur like listed above. I think I'd pick Gareth Edwards for his work on Monsters, and also for what he did with the effects on The Creator. That film looked better than ones with 3x the budget. Alex Garland would be decent too. Give them a TON OF TIME to prepare how the CGI will fit into what is being shot (this is where most films die, as short-term gains are all that matter), find the right effects team (with small enough personnel to fund them for a long while) and give them more time than usual to develop and polish the effects rather than try to patch them all in at the end in a rush. A lengthy, yet somewhat cost-controlled post-production is a must. At some point throwing money at a problem creates worse results, we see it in both the gaming and visual effects industries.

Try to minimise CGI cityscapes as they look weightless, but do include a few obvious "London" landmarks added to the skyline, but to save money probably shoot in Leeds/Birmingham or something with maybe a marquee effects sequence shot somewhere famous in London. Focus on the iconic aspect of the dead lead's makeup, nail it down with the hope of some social media buzz. Make sure that each phase of the decay looks great in its own right and has a little ick to it. Make sure you smash up a bunch of physical stuff like cars, railings, and storefronts, it never fails to look great when shot well. Don't spend too long on the establishment, as tempting as it is to wring value out of a rural location, cut to the chase and make it 1hr 50 tops. Keep it entertaining, not artsy, but maintain a weight to the action. Don't fill it with Pakistanis (impossible).

Follow the personality of the original characters very closely and do not "modernise" them. Just to prove that I am not a complete regressive, you may include an internet aspect such as them getting lost on the moors at the beginning because of mobile phone service or something. Maybe make one of the leads a twink or east asian to bring in the female audience. Try to find one of the only writers in the industry that reads books and travels (this may be impossible) to play with the culture-clash aspects in a way other than "wow, they call fries chips here" or "haha you tried to tip the waiter, we don't do this here". The original movie avoided being annoying about this, but the modern industry is full of such incurious retards that this will be a recurring suggestion that will require constant suppression. Avoid overseriousness. Avoid excessively "relatable" dialogue and maybe dig a touch into the Mamet/Kafka spaces to layer down the surreal and isolated tone. You can even add small gothic flourishes in the soundtrack which would help with the tone (an unfunny comedy). A lack of naturalism is fine and the audience is ready for it.

The whole premise lives and dies on whether the creature looks convincing and can inhabit the physical space in a realistic manner. All the absurd over-gesticulation, weightless rubble and particle effects, shitty sound effects etc, that we've become accustomed to would need to be solved and I doubt that they can.
 
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