Wed Sept 18, 2024
About to embark on a world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her past.
Modern horror films were born during the 1930s Depression, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, and Dracula were all popular. Negative mood seeks out negative themes and these films were just that. Gangster films were also popular including Public Enemy and White HEat with Jimmy Cagney. These themes were repeated in the 1970s with the Exorcist, the most frightening film ever the ads claimed, and Godfather 1 & 2.
Now we see a repeat with Quiet Place 1 & 2.
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Horror moves to Television
HBO debuts a multi segment series this week featuring Colin Farrell as The Penquin. This is a character he played in the 2022 Te Batman movie. But this time around there is not Batman, more time for horror.
The review on page A 11 of today's Nov 19 WSj puts it this way. The Penquin is a homicidal maniac with a Mother fixation. The review mentions this is a flashback to the character Cagney played in White Heat.
Here is part of the review
How did we get here, one might ask? The evolution of The Batman—from DC Comics to campy network TV to the grim vision of Frank Miller’s graphic novels to Christopher Nolan’s masterly interpretations—seems symptomatic of a darker worldview. And darker world. But adaptations like “The Penguin”—or, lest anyone forget, 2019’s “Joker”—are more reflective of a hunger among audiences for something more genuine, not just in their Batman stories but in their myths and histories generally. The original DC myth is laughable in a world in which everyone is a Freudian; the concept of costumed crime fighters—and criminals—seems fairly ludicrous without sufficient psychological trauma and an accompanying profile to back it up. “The Penguin” is an attempt to fill a fictional void.
A hunger for something more genuine, really? I would say again that it is just a hunger for negative mood which Mr. Farrell will deliver eight times over.
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