The final chapter of the Paranormal Activity franchise, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, was released in theaters on October 23rd. My friend and I planned on catching a late showing the previous night, but to our dismay discovered it wasn’t actually playing anywhere near us. How could the final film in a cash-printing horror franchise …
Although it seems they are synonymous with found-footage horror, low budget movies that will still be financial successes if audiences stop turning out in droves to see them, Blumhouse Productions are arguably something far more interesting. Their prolific output can easily be read as an updating of Roger Corman’s low budget exploitation aesthetic for the 21st century, albeit one that reflects pop culture’s increasingly low standards when it comes to genre filmmaking.
M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Visit’ just made surprisingly good money for a small, independent opening. Could he be on the rise as a player again?
The opening scene of Joe Carnahan’s latest shows a man getting jettisoned from the driver’s side window of his car in a crash, hitting the ground rolling and ending up sitting on the street with barely a scratch. That’s how this film begins, and it only gets zanier from there. The plot follows a down-on-his-luck limo driver, Stretch (Patrick Wilson), who finds out he has to pay $6,000 of gambling debts by midnight. Roger Karos (Chris Pine), a deranged billionaire, offers to cover his debt if he drives him around for the evening, an experience that gets more hellish with each passing minute.