Carnival of souls

Just last week I saw Ravenous for the first time. It took until about five minutes after it ended for me to realize that I loved it. Beautifully shot and edited, so thoughtful, so moving, so revolting–a horror film about giving and taking and all they entail, held down by tremendous performances by Robert Carlyle and (playing his character as Carlyle’s antithesis in a bravely charisma-free move) Guy Pearce. And lo and behold, new kid on the Dark But Shining block Ken Lowery has just blogged a paean to the movie, specifically to Carlyle’s character. I can totally see what Ken says about Ravenous being a cult movie’s cult movie; any film that centers around a character whose name is spelled Colqhuon is going to have a damn hard time finding an audience. I’m not quite as sold on the score as everyone else seems to be–perhaps it’s my leftover disillusionment with co-writer Damon Albarn’s Blur work of late, but at times it was either maddeningly repetitive (and hey, I like Steve Reich, so this really must be something) or wildly inappropriate for the moment–but I agree with most everything else this film’s fans have said about it. Highly recommended, fright fans.

On the water monster beat:

Bloody Disgusting has the scoop on The Host, the upcoming Korean horror film advertised in the above poster. Apparently, the monster glimpsed therein is co-designed by Watcher in the Water maestros Weta. Rad.

Meanwhile, this sounds vaguely familiar but I can’t remember consciously thinking about it until reading this item, also from BD: Apparently a “reimagining” of the Friday the 13th franchise is in the offing in the form of a film that will incorporate elements from throughout the series’ mythos. I’ve yet to see a single Friday, but I’ve always found it so fascinating that it took until the third installment for the series as it’s commonly thought of, i.e. an unstoppable hockey-masked killer named Jason runs around murdering horny stoned teenagers, to take shape. (Something slightly similar happened with the Hellraiser series, in the first two installments of which the intended antagonist was the black-widow figure, Julia, and not the regal prince of Hell and instant horror icon, Pinhead.) Apparently this remake/revamp/whatever will feature both Jason (whose first turn as the killer in Part 2 saw him sporting a burlap bag on his head) and his murderous mother (the villain of the first installment).

And now for something completely different: Scrubs, the best comedy on television, is apparently doing quite well this season. The suggested reason? It’s stopped trying to please a wide audience and started catering to its cult following, yours truly included. Unlikely recipes for success are always the best kind.