Hook Me Up

I'm not much of a TV person and it wasn't until I met my wife that I became anything close to a moviephile, but a good TV series (say, The Walking Dead) or a good movie (28 Days Later) can reel me in (Heh! Get it? "Reel me in." Movie reel. Okay, onward).

But finding good shows or movies to watch can be hard because there's just so much crap out there. Too often, the trailers for the movies or shows contain all the good stuff and the rest is just filler, and bad filler at that. Worse, a director can do really good things with a movie, but gets stuck in how to get out of the box he's created and so comes up with a lame ending. A lot of times I'm left feeling there's a lot of film that's been left on the cutting room floor.

However, lately I've become addicted to a resource that's at least leading me in the right direction to really good cinema: Hook's Haunted Hollow.

I'm not sure how I found his blog, but I started tuning in lately and I've found it's just a wealth of movie and TV show trailers and links for stuff that's coming out that looks like it's going to be awesome. For example, there's an indie movie that just came out called The Tunnel, about an Australian news crew doing a story on an abandoned subway system in Sydney. Thinking it was more a story about homeless people going missing, they find there's a lot more going on beneath their feet than anyone could imagine.

I had seen a trailer for the movie and thought it looked really cool, but then Hook's blog posted the filmmakers were offering a free, legal download of the movie -- in high-def even. I immediately downloaded and watched it yesterday and it was every bit as good as I thought it was going to be. I wouldn't have known about the free download had it not been for Hook's post.



Then there's the regular updates about the coming movie Super 8, several new TV shows coming out this year that look very cool -- The River, Awake, and Person of Interest -- and more. The man's got way too much time on his hands to be finding and posting all these links, trailers, and updates, but I'm glad he does. I'm pretty much a couch potato as it is (though my laptop is usually in hand rather than the TV remote), but I may never have a reason to get up with all the cool stuff he's finding.

If you're the least bit interested at all in horror, thriller, and even sci-fi-ish stuff (he's got Green Lantern updates, X-Men, and Transformers too) you must check out and follow Hook's Haunted Hollow. Really, it's simply a convenient way to stay on top of the best these genres have coming out. It's definitely on my daily, must-read list.

Ghosts, Limited

As I've written about before, despite having a complete disbelief in an afterlife, spirits, and hauntings, I do still enjoy watching shows and or movies about them. Although sometimes over the top, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures can be entertaining, perhaps precisely because of their hammy performances.

So I tuned in last night to Animal Planet's "Demon Exorcist." I was first surprised to see it had nothing to do with animals -- which was good, because I never would have tuned in, and besides, I think they already have a haunted pets show or something -- and then surprised to find out it had no exorcisms either. Seriously, unless you count wiping some "holy water" on the doors and walls of a house, it was an hour of nothing.

I'm sure Father Karras would have been surprised to find out as well that all it took to remove a spirit from a house was a brief group prayer, the aforementioned holy water dispersal, and a simple incantation to leave the house. Poof! Gone!

Particularly since one of the "victims" had been haunted by several specters her entire life after giving herself over to the dark side to save her sister from the fate when they were just children -- sacrificed, as they were, by their own Satanist parents no less! -- basically saying "boo" to the demon sent him hightailing it out of the house. The woman and her sister seemed more to have some deep emotional problems than a case of demonic possession.

The second case had potential though. A family with three kids lived in a house that was supposedly possessed by a demon and they've been forced to resort to sleeping together in one room because of the haunting. The interviews with the kids built up some suspense that maybe there would be some raucous goings on, but alas! no. Results were the same: group prayer, a holy water dousing, and begone! It was laughable when after wiping the holy water all over the house the "demonologist" was surprised to see the remaining water turn cloudy. "I've never seen that before." Hey buddy, do you think you might have been transferring some dust from the walls to the water? And the wife seemed to describe what sounded more like having a wet dream rather than being attacked by an incubus.

Proof the "exorcism" was successful lie (lay? I can never remember which) in the reaction of the homeowners when they returned to the house. If they felt good about the place, then all was well. Seeing the mother and son stand looking into a closet and the mother saying, "Now that feels like a closet" was hilarious.

In short, there was nothing "there" there. It was just an hour long talkfest. Jason and Grant at Ghost Hunters, along with Zac and the boys at Ghost Adventures, have lowered the bar so far that shows like Demon Exorcist can get greenlighted. How many years has Ghost Hunters been on and they've never caught anything on camera that hasn't been able to be debunked as Grant pushing the envelope? Those darn ghosts only want to be filmed at the very edge of sight, not up close and personal, no matter how many cameras are placed in a house.

And other than Ghost Adventures flying brick in the first(?) episode -- where Zac and the others inexplicably ran screaming from the building rather than investigate further -- have been unable to catch proof of anything either.

So Demon Exorcist can now come on and purport to exorcise spirits from a house with little more than what you'd see staged by kids playing with an Ouija board -- and again filming even less "proof" than Ghost Hunters/Adventures -- and getting it on the air.

Don't waste an hour of your own life watching another episode of Demon Exorcist. It was simply awful.

I'm Dead Set For It

There's been a lot of discussion about the new TV series "The Walking Dead" due to premier on October 31 at 10 p.m. on AMC, but I haven't heard mention of another show that's coming out on the 25th and will broadcast for five straight nights through the 29th: "Dead Set."

Apparently this was a British TV show that first aired back in 2008, but is only now making its way across the pond to the U.S. The mini-series tells the story of the only people who've survived a zombie contagion: the contestants holed up in the house of the game show Big Brother.

According to About.com:

"Britain has been hit by an epic problem. The dead are returning to life and attacking the living. Within two days, 80 percent of the population is dead. Few people remain who aren't worried about this living nightmare: the remaining contestants in the reality TV game show 'Big Brother.' Cocooned in the safety of the Big Brother house, they're blissfully unaware of the horrific events unfolding in the outside world...until eviction night when the walking dead descend on the studio."

Now as cheesy as that sounds, the trailer for it actually looks pretty good:

There is one dilemma though: if you miss any of the episodes they're going to be broadcast back-to-back at a later time. Great right? Except it's on Halloween night, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Aside from interfering with trick-or-treaters, it would also run into the premier of The Walking Dead. 

Dead Set is going to be airing on the IFC channel. I have Cablevision, so for me here in northern New Jersey, that would be Channel 83 or in hi-def on Channel 783. You can find out if you have IFC on your cable or satellite provider here.

Of course, my Halloween party is also on the 29th and starts at 7:00 p.m. which presumably means I'd miss the last episode. What's a haunter to do? Probably ignore my guests and watch the end of the show!

Waking the Dead

Ask and ye shall receive.

Just last night I said that if writers and directors took the zombie genre seriously we could build upon what we have in both the literary and theatrical field. Brad Pitt is making World War Z into a film and Mira Grant has written a thoroughly smart, entertaining book in Feed.

Now this morning, the iconic Pumpkinrot posted a link to a bootleg trailer of a new TV series(!) that is set to launch this fall on AMC called "The Walking Dead." As 'Rot urges, view this trailer ASAP because it's likely to be taken down from YouTube at some point, though it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be some sort of "underground" viral marketing campaign.

You should also look at it ASAP because the show looks simply awesome!

The Walking Dead is about a police officer leading a group of survivors looking for safety. In many ways, it follows a similar plot line from 28 Days Later in that the cop wakes up in a hospital after having been shot and after the world has been overrun by zombies. The zombies here, though, don't look to be the fast kind.

From the trailer, the zombie special effects are instantly recognizable from any number of zombie flicks you might have seen -- greyed out flesh, dark blood stains around the mouth, etc. -- but there are also a few otherwise original shots. For example, towards the end of the trailer, there appears to be a torso crawling towards someone and the face of a woman is partially skeletonized. For a TV series, it looks like it has excellent production values.

Here in my area of Bergen County, NJ, AMC is on Cablevision Channel 43, Dish Network Channel 890, DirecTV Channel 254, and Verizon FiOS Channel 201. You can find what channel it's on near you by using the handy "channel finder."

Happy viewing!