Assemblog: July 6, 2012

Citadel still from Bloody Disgusting

New on Popshifter this week: Part two of our continuing series on THE BAND’s discography (The Band); and a review of Ernie Kovacs: The ABC Specials on DVD.

First off: A couple of weeks ago I talked about Google takedown requests. I’d like to clarify some things in light of a discussion that arose from that David Lowery article I posted last week.

Google is not being asked to scrub search results, but to remove their own ads embedded on sites that encourage illegal activity (filesharing). Such embedded ads are a violation of Google’s own AdSense program policies (which can be read here under the “Content guidelines”), specifically “Any other content that is illegal, promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others.”

No doubt there will be more about this ongoing issue in future Popshifter articles.

And now for trailers! There are a lot of terrific ones to share with you this week.

Remember that crazy Law & Order SVU episode from a few years ago where Robin Williams played what was essentially a modern version of The Riddler? The opening segment of that episode—in which a fast food employee is strip searched and sexually assaulted under the command of a nameless voice on the phone—was based on a real life incident that took place in Kentucky.

Compliance is a new film that screened at this year’s Sundance festival and is based on the same incident. Check out this unsettling trailer. (H/T to /Film.)

Here is the trailer for the Korean anthology, Horror Stories, which will open the 16th annual PiFan (Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival) Festival. What I like most about this trailer is how the imagery is kind of terrifying even if you have no knowledge of the plot. (H/T to Twitch. For more on PiFan, go here.)

We finally have a trailer for Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man! The movie seems to be a departure, in terms of the level of onscreen violence, from Laugier’s last film, Martyrs. I find that interesting because French horror filmmakers Alexandre Bustillo and Julie Maury’s newest film, Livide, is quite a bit different from their ultraviolent debut À l’intérieur. In fact, there is one shot in the trailer for The Tall Man (as well as a major plot point) that directly recalls the plot of Livide. (H/T to Bloody Disgusting.)

The trailer for Australian thriller Wrath is so good, I hope the movie doesn’t disappoint! I like the multiple storylines aspect and the vague hints of how the characters connect as well as the idea that what seems bad in the beginning actually gets much worse by the end. See what you think. (H/T to Bloody Disgusting.)

Film4 FrightFest is a UK genre festival which runs from August 23 to 27 in London. This is the festival’s 13th year and they’re screening a bunch of movies that look and interesting. If you go to their site and look around, you’ll find descriptions, stills, and trailers, but here were a couple that I thought looked the most promising.

Based on the still of the monster on the FrightFest site, I was disappointed not to find the trailer for After, but a quick web search revealed it’s on the movie’s website, which is where I grabbed this. Interestingly, the trailer doesn’t show that creature but instead conveys an almost Twilight Zone-type of atmosphere with a bit of The Mist. This looks quite promising!

Community is not based on what happens to your favorite NBC sitcom after the show’s creator is fired, but instead is a mix of straight-up horror and found footage with some very nasty children.

Fantasia Fest, which I’ve talked about previously, is a three-week juggernaut of a genre film festival that takes place in Montreal. One of the films screening there, Citadel, is another film about very nasty children, only this time they’re feral. Citadel is loosely based on “director Ciarán Foy’s personal experience of being attacked, and the fears and agorophobia he was left dealing with in the aftermath of the incident.” The film won the Audience Award at SXSW earlier this year.

This trailer definitely reminds me of Cronenberg’s The Brood, which I consider one of the most memorable horror movies I’ve ever seen, only instead of being fed by anger, these evil kids feed on fear.

Much less visceral and in-your-face is the trailer for Resolution, which posits one of my personal favorite horror set ups: people in an already compromised state face something awful that they could not have anticipated. Resolution also screened at this year’s Tribeca Festival.

Whew, that’s a lot of trailers. I sincerely hope that these films aren’t relegated to the endless festival circuit and get at least limited release or that they are available on DVD fairly soon.

—Less Lee Moore, Managing Editor