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timespace coordinates: 2010’s sushi restaurant in a Korean fishing village
Swimming to Sea (Korean: 파닥파닥; RR: Padakpadak) is a 2012 South Korean computer-animated musical psychological thriller film written and directed by Dae-hee Lee; as of 2020, this is the only adult animated film released by CJ Entertainment to date. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 2019 (+) New Orleans
Synchronic is a 2019 American science fiction horror film directed and produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead and written by Benson. It stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan. (wiki)
Two New Orleans paramedics’ lives are ripped apart after they encounter a series of horrific deaths linked to a designer drug with bizarre, otherworldly effects.
timespace coordinates: Antarctica 1982
The Thing is a 1982 American science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter and written by Bill Lancaster. Based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella Who Goes There?, it tells the story of a group of American researchers in Antarctica who encounter the eponymous “Thing”, a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates other organisms. The group is overcome by paranoia and conflict as they learn that they can no longer trust each other and that any one of them could be the Thing. The film stars Kurt Russell as the team’s helicopter pilot, R.J. MacReady, and features A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, and Thomas G. Waites in supporting roles.
The Thing was released in 1982 to very negative reviews. It was described as “instant junk”, “a wretched excess”, and proposed as the most-hated film of all time by film magazine Cinefantastique. Reviews both praised the special effects achievements and criticized their visual repulsiveness, while others found the characterization poorly realised.
The film found an audience when released on home video and television. In the subsequent years it has been reappraised as one of the best science fiction and horror films ever made, and has gained a cult following.
Dark Horse Comics published four comic book sequels starring MacReady, beginning in December 1991 with the two-part The Thing from Another World by Chuck Pfarrer, which is set 24 hours after the film. This was followed by the four-part The Thing from Another World: Climate of Fear in July 1992, the four-part The Thing from Another World: Eternal Vows in December 1993, and The Thing from Another World: Questionable Research. In 1999, Carpenter said that no serious discussions had taken place for a sequel, but he would be interested in basing one on Pfarrer’s adaptation, calling the story a worthy sequel. A 2002 video game of the same name was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox to generally favorable reviews. The game’s plot follows a team of U.S. soldiers investigating the aftermath of the film’s events.
A prequel film, The Thing, was released in October 2011, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., written by Eric Heisserer, and starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen The story follows the events after the Norwegian team discovers the Thing.
In 2020, Universal Studios and Blumhouse Productions announced the development of a remake of Carpenter’s The Thing. The remake was described as incorporating elements of The Thing from Another World and The Thing, as well as the novella Who Goes There?, and its expanded version, Frozen Hell that features several additional chapters.
Although released years apart, and unrelated in terms of plot, characters, crew, or even production studios, Carpenter considers The Thing to be the first installment in his “Apocalypse Trilogy”, a series of films based around cosmic horror, entities unknown to man, that are threats to both human life and the sense of self. The Thing was followed by Prince of Darkness in 1987, and In the Mouth of Madness in 1994. All three films are heavily influenced by Carpenter’s appreciation for the works of Lovecraft. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: August 1943 Auckland, New Zealand > Samoa
Shadow in the Cloud is a 2020 American-New Zealand fantasy adventure action film directed by Roseanne Liang, from a screenplay by Liang and Max Landis. It stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Taylor John Smith, Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale and Callan Mulvey. Its plot deals with a World War II air force service woman who is on a mysterious mission, only to have a gremlin attack the bomber she is riding on. (wiki)
The animated segment at the beginning of the film is based on Private Snafu, a series of adult-oriented instructional shorts meant to educate enlisted personnel on army discretion, hygiene, combat readiness and daily life. They were produced between 1943 and 1945, and given they were not meant to be public, were free from censorship restrictions. The title character, parodied in the film, come from the military acronym “Situation Normal All Fucked Up”.
timespace coordinates: 2010’s South Sudan > outskirts of London
His House is a 2020 horror thriller film written and directed by Remi Weekes from a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables. It stars Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu and Matt Smith. The film tells the story of a refugee couple from South Sudan, struggling to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface. (wiki)
“The main source of information on witchcraft of the Dinka people comes from British anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt, who devoted his studies to the Dinka religion. His article written in 1951 for the International African Institute, “Some Notions of Witchcraft Among the Dinka”, sheds light on the apeth and helps to enrich the folkloric vocabulary of His House. According to Lienhardt, night witches work their supernatural misfortunes in the darkness, an element incorporated in the film when Bol turns on the lights to make the ghosts go away. They can also make their presence known through footprints and place curses on their victims through the staring “evil eye,” a concept that says as much about Bol and Rial’s suspiciously xenophobic neighbors as it does their haunting.
Night witches are the most malicious wielders of magic since their main intentions are always to harm others without receiving anything as a trade-off. Thieves like the one in Rial’s story may be creating hardship for those they steal from, but their deeds are motivated by the goal of gaining benefits for themselves. The apeth, on the other hand, lives only to “eat,” a distinction made to describe the fact that the witch consumes the good fortune of its victims, leaving nothing but misery in its wake. Lienhardt talks about this idea in the context of the community or family unit, a thematic connection to His House.” (read more: His House: Dinka Mythology Explained by andrew housman / His House: The Ending, Monster & Final Scene Explained by hannah shaw-williams)
Anything for Jackson is a 2020 horror film written by Keith Cooper and directed by Justin G. Dyck. The film stars Sheila McCarthy, Julian Richings, Konstantina Mantelos and Josh Cruddas. The entire movie was made for $250,000.
“There’s something deliciously subversive about the backstory to this offbeat horror film, which was made in Canada. Director Justin G Dyck and screenwriter Keith Cooper have collaborated on a long list of treacly, holiday-themed, made-for-TV movies with titles such as A Very Country Christmas, Christmas With a View and A Christmas Village. Anything for Jackson, however, is a riotously gory, impish inversion of all things yuletide, in that it stars sweet-featured elderly character actors Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings as grieving grandparents Audrey and Henry Walsh, who kidnap pregnant Shannon Becker (Konstantina Mantelos) in order to perform a satanic ritual on her. It’s as if Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer, the little old couple who lived next door in Rosemary’s Baby, got to be the stars of their own movie.” (Leslie Felperin review / theguardian)
With blood-soaked gore leaking onto the pristine snow and a unique spin on satanic rituals, Anything For Jackson will appease anti-Yuletide viewers looking to immerse themselves in icy depths of unsettling horror. (Rachel West)
Nightflyers is a 1987 American science fiction horror film directed by Robert Collector (as T.C. Blake) based on Nightflyers, a 1980 novella by George R. R. Martin. (wiki)
The movie has a notably “misty” look, blurring colors and detail. Though this movie has never been released on DVD, Blu-ray, or high-definition streaming, this was a deliberate choice by the producers, director, and cinematographer. They wanted to depict a “dream-like” state in an era before high-definition home video was even possible, much less affordable.
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