Wish Upon Movie Review

Wish Upon was not only predictable but sophomoric in its intention and style.  There wasn’t anything about this self-professed horror movie that would come anywhere close to startling even a new fan of the genre and definitely will not be surprising or shocking your average movie watcher. 

Often, the narrative seems to lack the discipline that’s needed to stay on track and be true to the characters, instead relying on the audience to grasp and accept what is being portrayed without a complete structure set up and we’re also asked to not mind the obvious stereotypes.  Most jarring of these would be the females being nothing but jealous of one another and decidedly empty between the ears.  This is used in a somewhat comedic way but to a ridiculous extent. 

The dialogue between the main character, Clare (King), and a senior boy, Paul (Slaggert), whom she has a crush on, is possibly the biggest example of regurgitating tired plotlines to the degree that they lose what could have been unique almost from the very beginning.  

What I mean by that is the use of the wish itself could have been so much better.  Not until the very end of the film are they even used creatively. 

To back up a bit, Clare is raised by her father, Jonathan (Phillippe) after her mother’s suicide.  She hasn’t had the best of lives but she has a few best friends who stick by her side and her father loves her very much.  Jonathan stumbles upon a beautiful box and gives it to her as a gift.  The box has Chinese writing all over the outside of it and, conveniently, the high school she’s in has a Chinese language class that she happens to be taking.  The box doesn’t open but she can read the script on the outside of it that reads, ‘seven wishes.’  She soon realizes that if she makes wishes upon it… they do come true.  How?  She wishes for something to happen to her mortal enemy.  This wish is quite awful and something that, if it were to happen, would baffle all medical science.  She’s shocked to find out it does happen.  Knowing that it was impossible and had to have been her wish, she tries again to see if she now possesses the power we’d all wish to have and it once again comes true.  After using several wishes and happy that she now has almost everything she has ever wanted, she all but abandons the person she was before getting the box and, oddly, doesn’t mind when she, at last, learns about the ramifications of using the box. 

I’ll let the movie explain more about that but if she is going to get a wish, the box, or what controls it, gets something in return.  What it wants is blood.  What it gets is blood.  So, what ultimately doesn’t work here is that you could have seen the wishes coming a mile away.  In fact, you see the entire story unfold in your mind before it plays out on screen.  Not even the consequences are original which adds the humdrum and stale to what was expected to be a fun flick.  The box that gives you seven wishes and how that came about is interesting but it’s counter productive to have a provocative idea and disappoint the audience by doing nothing avant garde with it.  Wish Upon instead plays it safe and uses a formulaic thread or technique that works.  Every step it takes has been done before and I believe the filmmakers missed a real chance to have something really memorable.

I feel I must admit that the acting wasn’t much better.  Joey King is excruciatingly awkward and somewhat too childlike for the role while Ryan Phillippe needs to be checked for a pulse.  There isn’t one performance that really stands out in a positive manner. 

In its defense, I would like to say that if you don’t watch many horror films, prefer not to or aren’t supposed to watch anything bloody or gory, then this may be perfect for you.  This isn’t a bad introduction to the category and isn’t much of a fright.  I would, however, suggest you catch it at a matinee.  There are some humorous moments and it does wrap up well but fans of horror and thrillers in general… this is not for you.  

The Beguiled Advance Movie Screening

Movie Screening Summary: “The Beguiled” is an atmospheric thriller from acclaimed writer/director Sofia Coppola. The story unfolds during the Civil War, at a Southern girls’ boarding school. Its sheltered young women take in an injured enemy soldier. As they provide refuge and tend to his wounds, the house is taken over with sexual tension and dangerous rivalries, and taboos are broken in an unexpected turn of events.

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Advance Movie Screening For The Beguiled

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Phoenix, Arizona

Advance Movie Screening Details

Movie Screening Date: Tuesday, June 27th
Location: Harkins Scottsdale 101
Movie Screening Time: 7:00pm
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Las Vegas, Nevada

Advance Movie Screening Details

Movie Screening Date: Wednesday, June 28
Location: Century Suncoast
Movie Screening Time: 7:00pm
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47 Meters Down Movie Review

Perhaps quite a few people are uneasy about being in enclosed places, and then just as many are queasy about getting close to sharks. If that is you, well — get ready for “47 Meters Down”, because your personal spooked-out meter will be peaking in the red zone. This movie will take many of the scariest things you can imagine and blend them into a nice smooth frightening shake.

Two sisters are in Mexico for a summer trip. Kate (Claire Holt) and Lisa (Mandy Moore) are getting away on a vacation. Lisa tells her sister it is because her long-term boyfriend broke up with her. He thought that Lisa was too boring. Lisa and Kate meet a couple of local guys, and they hit it off. They convince Kate to go on an underwater scuba trip to see the sharks. Lisa is much more sensible and does not want to go. Kate tells her that if she goes on the tip, she will prove she is not boring.

They meet Captain Taylor (Matthew Modine) who owns the worn-out old boat and the crappy-looking equipment for a shark dive. They don the scuba gear and get in the cage and start to descend down around 20 feet. They have only limited oxygen in their tanks, and they have limited experience underwater. But that is about to change. The cable holding the shark cage snaps, sending them down to 47 meters below the surface.

Both Kate and Lisa know that they cannot swim straight up to the surface. Once they go up, every 20 meters or so they would need to stop and let their blood handle the nitrogen bubbles, or they could die from the bends. They have no communication with the boat on the surface. So they take turns to try things out. One will swim up to try and get radio contact, then the other will trace down a mysterious flashlight brought down with a different cable hook. If they get it attached, they can be gently pulled up to the boat.

But, yes there are sharks in these here waters. So every attempt to get free or get back up to the boat is met with a potential big toothy grin. The guy who brought down the flashlight and the new cable was attacked and killed. Either Kate or Lisa could be next. The new cable turns out to be as useless as the first cable, and now they are trapped again. The Coast Guard has been called for a rescue, but they are an hour away.

Lisa and Kate almost run out of oxygen, and they two new tanks are sent down. But the new tanks can keep them alive. However, being down for so long can bring on nitrogen poisoning.  This could lead to hallucinations and feelings of a dream-like state. They will both need to keep an eye on each over to make sure the other one does not get crazy ideas. After all, there is a rescue operation just about to begin…

To say anything more would deprive you of getting your feet wet and seeing this movie. The story is pretty straight-forward. Put two nice ladies in peril, and spend the rest of the movie trying to figure out how to get them freed.  Mandy Moore and Claire Holt do a decent job, but much of the dialog is scuba breathing and screaming. They prove to be intelligent characters, except for the fact that they got on such a dumpy boat to begin with.

The setup gets going really quickly, and the part underwater is intense and spooky. Each of the sisters does her best to comfort the other one. But it is hard to find any comfort when you are more than 150 feet below the surface. Since this movie is so tense and spooky, I will need to lighten it up…

Once I threw out all the chopped up fish and fish guts into the water, the sharks got real chummy.

It Comes At Night Movie Review

It Comes at Night is incredibly manipulative in the way it reels you in, first assisting you in comfort and then, in the blink of an eye, taking you to the edge of insanity.  The film is dark but not a horror film per se.  It’s an on the edge of your seat thriller that pulls you in several directions at once; barely allowing you a moment to rest before tugging at again you again.  Watching, you’re like the young woman in the opening scene of Jaws, being whipped about and then pulled into the depths of the unknown.  The unknown in this instance is what comes at night, in the darkness, when you’re alone and everything around you is a potential threat.      

This is a story about a family who has a home deep in the woods that is now their hideaway from whatever happened to the rest of the world.  What happened is unidentified but it was toxic.  Something made people who were exposed to ‘it’ violently ill.  This plaque of sorts kills you rather quickly and those who figured it out and hoped they weren’t exposed ran away and either contaminated others with their infection or learned how to live with it.  Paul and Sarah, their son Travis have learned how to cope and also protect themselves from being vulnerable.  Sadly, as we learn in the opening scene of the film, this has come too late for her father Bud who is already covered in blisters, barely breathing and about to die.  Paul, with Travis (who’s only seventeen), takes Bud to an open pit they dug.  After putting him down like an animal, they throw his body in and burn his remains to help stop the spread of the mysterious disease. 

A well lit and beautifully photographed, (complete with an eerily creepy yet gorgeous string instrument filled track) nightmare later, we awaken with Travis screaming that someone is in the house.  By the way, this scene has one hell of a memorable jump scare.   Anyway, the family, prepared for this kind of assault, finds that a young man has broken in and they surprise him, shove guns in his face, take him outside and tie him to a tree to teach him a lesson.  They’re not kind to strangers.  They live by rules that have kept them alive so far and this man has challenged those rules.  Before long, we discover that he simply wants to bring his family there; to live somewhere out of danger.  Sarah talks Paul into allowing this and though Paul is skeptical, he agrees.  Travis enjoys the family being there and what ultimately started out as a thriller becomes sort of a drama in that Travis begins to resent his situation as well as his father. 

It Comes at Night is aesthetically pleasing.  The music is outstanding and lends to the intensity throughout the film.  Tribal drumbeats explode so loudly from the speakers of one scene that it seems the vibration alone physically moves you.  Director Shults (Krisha) uses this tactic each and every time anything exciting happens.  It’s made better by the sheer skill in which he chooses to tell his story. 

My final take is that a lot of what’s going on in the film you’ll see coming if you’ve been watching page-turners your whole life.  I believe you’ll forgive this because of the imaginative nature with which these characters have derived.  The film is a survival guide on steroids and an unbelievably heartbreaking look at what we could become, leaving you to wonder how you’d behave in the same situation.  It’s a bit slow at times and there are a few moments that don’t quite add up but as I mentioned before, they’re nothing that will ruin the film for you.  I’d like to warn you of one thing, however, if you have a weak heart!  If Travis is on the screen, get yourself in defense mode.

Alien: Covenant Movie Review

While the Alien Covenant film is tolerable, mostly due to the visuals, the crew you should be rooting for during any crisis they may be facing is less than memorable.  None of the characters are especially noteworthy and you won’t grow particularly fond of anyone as the story progresses.  It’s this connection that’s needed and is so important for a story like this to propel you into the world they inhabit. 

Fearing for a character’s safety, especially in this particular franchise, is paramount to it being a success.  Though Covenant does bring back the horror element that was more dominant in the first film, Alien, it doesn’t quite capture the consternation that the original had.  That said, it is more on the gory side of the horror, sci-fi genre.   It’s set about a decade in the aftermath of Prometheus, a film not well loved by the Alien faithful.  Though the film may not have been well received, Michael Fassbender was and is in this film, as well.  He’s back as David and also as Walter, another synthetic.  Walter looks like David, has many of the qualities of David except for one little important difference.  I’ll let you discover that on your own.

Walter Minds the crew and the ship, Covenant, as its crew members and cargo of pilgrims make their journey to another planet similar to our own in the hopes of colonizing it.  A short time passes and, of course, insert one of the typical problems that happen in films where spaceships are floating along in deep space; they’re hit by something that does damage.  This also awakens most of the crew who have been in a deep sleep… killing a few along the process.

They receive a strange message from a planet closer to the one they had originally charted their course for.  This seems a little too convenient but the captain (Crudup) says it’ll be worth a shot and they set out for this planet instead.  This is where it really gets sloppy because the things these skilled professionals are doing say to a filmgoer that the filmmaker doesn’t take your intelligence into consideration when creating a story.  Several things happen that get different members of the crew ill when they land on this unknown land.  They aren’t really quarantined which leads to more devastation but at least it’s entertaining.  Per usual, the effects are great and the visuals of the first person, who shows signs of being taken over by a foreign entity and thusly being killed by it, is ghoulish and eerie… everything you could have hoped for.

Eventually they find David who has been alone here (obviously he’s the one who would have sent the message for them to pick up) and he and Walter get to know one another; and as long as you don’t get lost as to which is which it’s fairly easy to deduce that one is up to something and the other is now a useful pawn.

A spaceship has issues; check.  We have aliens; check.  The film has formulaic touches you’d expect it to have; check.  Unfortunately, its pacing is slow and flat in the beginning and the characters so drab, (which is sad because one is supposed to be the descendant of Ripley from Alien) that it’s hard to really get into it.  There are so many, if you really want to tear it apart, problems with it that if you concentrate on them, your brain will explode so, best not to.  One specific thing I feel I must address, though, is their brains.  This crew does this for a living and they just disregard all policy, procedure, rules and… all common sense the minute they land on a strange planet?!  It makes no sense so try not to think about it too much.  Just let things that defy logic or are the completely unexplained go.  If you love sci-fi films and the Alien franchise as a whole, you might have some need for this.  You’re not going to totally dislike it, you’re just not going to love it.  It’s not the worst of the bunch; however, it’s certainly not the best.  Rumor is there will be a few more of these… I hope Scott turns the helm over to someone who can steer a little better.

ALIEN: COVENANT Official Channels

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It Comes at Night New Trailer

STARRING

Joel Edgerton, Riley Keough, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo and Kelvin Harrison Jr.

WRITTEN BY

Trey Edward Shults

DIRECTED BY

Trey Edward Shults


Trey Edward Shults’ highly anticipated horror-thriller stunned critics at a secret screening at the famed Timberline Lodge this past weekend. Watch Joel Edgerton give us the rules for survival in terrifying new trailer.

In Theaters June 9th

http://www.fandango.com

blackcoats_daughter

The Blackcoat’s Daughter Movie Review

Are you a horror fan looking for something new?  Then don’t miss Blackcoat’s Daughter; another winner from A24!  The short answer as to why you can’t miss this is that it totally embodies the new part that you’ve been looking for.  So, here’s a bit of unsolicited advice for you, if you don’t mind, don’t read much more about the film.  Don’t watch a trailer.  Go in cold, only knowing that you have to see it.  You’re a horror fan and that’s all you need to be.  If you’d like to continue reading, I don’t give away too much. 

Cinematically, it’s a stunner.  I’m ready to watch it again for the pure enjoyment of it.  The music is so unsettling, the way bows screech across their string instruments or the strings are plucked hard to get your attention in a given moment… genius.  Much like horror classics, the music is central in setting the sweeping tenor of the film.  It was absolutely unnerving. 

You’ll also be impressed with how this story, that centers on three different girls, starts to unfold.  Kat (Shipka) and Rose (Boynton) are stuck at their Catholic school in Bramford during winter break.  When their parents don’t come and pick them up, the headmaster asks that they are watched over by a couple of nuns.  Kat and Rose don’t know one another very well, nor do they particularly like one another, but they’re making due with the situation they find themselves. 
Then we are introduced to a young woman on the road named Joan who is played by Emma Roberts.  She’s odd; almost lifeless when she is approached by Bill (Remar) and Linda (Holly) who assume the girl’s in trouble and would like to help.  She reminds Bill of their daughter and he can’t help but tell her so.  Uncomfortable, but desperate to get to Bramford, she accepts the ride.  As Joan gets closer to Bramford, she gets more and more dark and we cut back and forth to and from the other girls.

We begin to pick up on more of each storyline.  Things are revealed about Kat who is having terrifying visions and she, like Joan, seems to get ill while her demeanor changes, as well.  Rose overhears something sinister and creeps around in the dark, abandoned school halls.  She does something that I don’t believe anyone in her situation would, however, and that is go downstairs where it’s dark and peeks through the window in a door she has no business looking through.  It’s here she sees something she wishes she hadn’t.  But when did this happen exactly and are you sure?  Just when you think you have this movie figured out, you didn’t know a thing.  What really works is how the tension builds in both storylines and you cannot wait to see them intersect… if that’s in fact what’s going to happen. 

Perkins’ writing and directing mixed with cinematographer Julie Kirkwood’s style, who worked with Perkins on the Netflix original I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, as well, will leave an impression on you.  This is a well told, rare, impactful story.   Perkins took special care in making sure you remembered his characters long after the movie was over.  I can assure you that you will.  The weather adds shading, the sets add mood, the lighting creates fear and, of course, the performances grip you.  Perkins wastes nothing in enhancing the film’s ambiance to set a specific tone for you. 

I couldn’t wait to see where the stories would come together.  As the movie got further and further in, I was getting more and more uncomfortable watching it alone… I’ll admit to then allowing a little daylight in by opening the curtains.  Let’s see how you fair.  Catch Blackcoat’s Daughter exclusively at the Alamo Drafthouse in Chandler, or wherever it’s playing near you, this weekend.  Good luck! 

IT – Teaser Trailer

In the Town of Derry, the local kids are disappearing one by one, leaving behind torn body parts/remains. In a place known as ‘The Barrens’, a group of seven kids are united by their horrifying and strange encounters with a clown called Pennywise.

Directed by:  AndrÊs Muschietti
Starring:  Bill Skarsgürd, Finn Wolfhard and Javier Botet

*EXCLUSIVE: Within 24 hours of its CinemaCon debut on Wednesday, the trailer for New Line/Warner Bros. upcoming Stephen King feature adaptation It smashed all online global traffic records with 197 million views, blowing past the previous 139M record set by Fate of the Furious when Universal dropped that trailer back in December.

New Line released the trailer for the Andres Muschietti-directed horror film in English along with 30 localized versions starting at 9AM Wednesday. Of the trailer’s 197M global views, more than 81M views and over 1.8M shares on the U.S. Facebook instance alone. Within hours after dropping, the It trailer became a viral sensation, trending across Facebook, Twitter and rising to the top of the Reddit Homepage with 30K-plus up votes in four hours. The video quickly rose to the No. 1 position on YouTube’s trending videos and remained there throughout the day.

The trailer helped It trend globally on Twitter with trends for It, It Movie, Pennywise and the Red Balloon Emoji  all appearing.

It is based on the 1986 novel by King, and follows seven children who are terrorized by the eponymous being, who exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. It generally appears as a clown in order to lure young children.

It opens on Sept. 8, the weekend after Labor Day.

In Theaters Sept 8th

http://www.fandango.com

Annabelle: Creation – Trailer

Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.

Director: David F. Sandbert

Starring: Miranda Otto, Javier Botet, Stephanie Sigman and Anthony LaPaglia

ONLINE LINKS:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnabelleMovie/videos/1400651923364160/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/annabellemovie/status/847856025734488064

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BST2JwJgpZJ/

In Theaters August 11th

http://www.fandango.com

Interview with Director Hunter Adams

I had a chat with fellow Wisconsin native turned L.A. filmmaker, Hunter Adams, about his new release, Dig Two Graves, which is available to watch on iTunes and at a theatre near you.  His film is a suspenseful thriller that is summed up perfectly by its tagline.  ‘A young girl’s obsession with her brother’s death leads her on a nightmarish journey where she is faced with a deadly proposition to bring him back.’  I was excited to speak to him and could have talked to him all night but administered some self-control and kept it short.  Here is some of that chat:

 

Me: So you’re from Wisconsin, I see.

HA: Wisconsin has a long history of serial killers and great directors. 

 

Me: (I resisted asking him if he were also a serial killer.)  A lot of great actors, as well.

HA: Yeah.  I’ve met a lot of crew out here in L.A. who are Wisconsinites.

 

From my experience, Wisconsin schools always encourage the arts and most Midwesterners are escaping the cold so this makes sense to me.  Moving on, I asked him where his fairly unique and bizarre story came from.

 

HA: It started off as a simple story about a young girl who loses her brother and then makes a deal with the devil, by way of these three hillbillies.  Ultimately, I decided I wanted to give them more of a concrete narrative… to be messing with the girl.  They were originally drawn in the Shakespearean tradition (the witches from MacBeth) where you just weren’t quite sure how much supernatural power they had or if they were just being manipulative.  I kinda wanted to walk that fine line.  But in the final version, we do have an actual reason for messing with the girl.

 

Me: Where did you originally get your love of films?

HA: From my mother.  She’s in my first film, The Hungry Bull.

 

Me: That’s a nice thing to be able to do.  What does she think of this film?

HA: My mom passed away while I was writing the script so she didn’t get to see the final product, unfortunately. 

 

Me: I’m sorry.  She’s with you, though.

HA: She definitely influenced the film.

 

Me: Did you go to film school?

HA: I didn’t really have a film school education per se.  Its been mostly a hodge-podge of classes and self-teaching and just watching as much as I can. 

 

Me: How long does it take to get a film like this made from script to screen?

HA: We started in 2011 and we went through a program called IFP (Independent Feature Project) New York, which is a big non-profit program.  So, we did their– we went to this film week in New York.  We went to a script lab and after that, we made some connections that led us to some investors and we ultimately started shooting in 2013.  It was about a year of editing afterward.  We shot for four weeks in January in the dead of winter and we went back for a few days in the summer for the opening shots of the two kids in the quarry.  And then the underwater sequences, which are at the end, we did that here in L.A. 

Me: You clearly love both writing and directing, is there one you’d prefer over the other if you could choose only one?

HA: Directing.  I like to have the control.  I love being on set and the collaboration, working with actors… the whole process; post production, working with the sound team.  All that stuff.  And I love the technical side as much as I do the artistic side. 

 

Me: Do you have a say in editing your projects?

HA: I edit a lot on my own for a living.  That’s how I pay the bills.  It’s something I’m heavily involved with but I had a good editor who worked with me on this one.

 

Me: I loved the tone, the color, and the overall feel that the landscape gave the film.  Where was this shot?

HA: We shot it in an interesting part of the country called Little Egypt.  It’s in southern Illinois.  Everything there is Egyptian themed.  Down there it isn’t flat and boring, it’s really wild and it has swamps and hills and cliffs and lots of slivers.  It’s a really interesting place; a great backdrop for a supernatural setting.  It’s about six hours south of Chicago.

 

Me: What was the most difficult thing to shoot in this production and what was the easiest?

HA: It’s sort of hard to narrow it down.  There were so many difficult shots.  So much of it was shot at night in very rural locations in the dead of winter and during one of the coldest winter spells on record in Illinois.  That made everything pretty challenging; pretty grueling.  But there were a couple of really technical things that were hard to achieve.  There was a fire scene… and the underwater sequence was really hard both for the actors and for me because as the director, you’re giving over control to the underwater technicians and it’s a really slow process.  That was really frustrating because I like to keep things moving.  So, I have to say the fire and the water.  They were the most technical and the hardest to pull off.  I think the easiest were the scenes between the grandfather and granddaughter.  They had such a natural chemistry together.  There wasn’t really very much I had to do except just get out of their way and let them be great actors together. They’re the real heartbeat of the story.  They’re the real emotional arc and I think that they both did a terrific job.  That makes me look good and makes my job easier. 

 

Me: Are you ever going to direct someone else’s work?

HA: It’s possible if the right script came along.  There’s nothing in the works at the moment.  I have a few projects that I’m developing but those are things that I’ve also written… but I definitely have my eyes and ears open.  If something came along I would not be opposed. 

 

Me: Tell me about your writing process.

HA: To me, because I’m writing, directing and am involved from the conception to completion, the writing process is pretty fluid and doesn’t just start and end on the page.  That’s one part of the process.  I also went down to southern Illinois, spent a couple of months down there… scouting locations and talking to locals and incorporating some of the folklore that I heard, into the screenplay.  Some changes come when you’re on set and you’re with the actors and they’re bringing their instincts in, it continues to change.  Then in post (production) we significantly re-shaped the storyline, as well.  But when I’m specifically writing, I try and set hours, you know?  I’ll get up at three in the morning and try and work; try to be as diligent as possible.  I have to really be regimented or I won’t get anything done.  I consider the writing process to be throughout the entire filmmaking process.  I was making changes right up until the last day of the sound mix; cutting shots out.  It’s an evolution, for sure.

Me: Congrats on doing such an amazing job of casting.

HA: We knew casting the girl was going to be the most important decision we made on the movie because it really rests on her shoulders and if the audience doesn’t take the journey with her than there really is no movie.  So, we spent a long time looking for the right actress to play that part and pretty late in the process we had a tape in the mail from Sammy (Samantha Isler).  She was living in Tulsa OK, had never been in a movie before and when we got the tape I knew, pretty much right away, that she was the one.  She had great instincts, she was smart and understood the subtext… had a real intention behind the words which is pretty rare to see in someone of that age and still have that innocence, you know, that wide-eyed look that we needed.  So, we got pretty lucky that we found her and a lot of the other cast were Chicago-based.  We were trying to cast locally as much as possible because of the budget.  So, we tapped into the local T.V. and theatre scene there and got some great actors and then Ted Levine was on our short list of actors we were looking at.  Short because the actor had to be a pretty specific age because we age him up and down for the two time periods.  And I’ve always loved his work.  He’s played some pretty iconic roles, Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs being the most notorious, but I was excited to see him play a meaty role for a change.  We gave him a chance to dig into a morally complex character.  We got lucky with him.  He’s a real method actor; he gets into the part… pretty obsessive about wardrobe and costuming and all that kind of stuff.  It was an honor to work with him.  I can’t even imagine another actor playing that role now. 

 

Me: Tell me about your next project, Blue Palms.

HA: The guy that did the storyboards on Dig Two Graves is a cartoonist friend of mine and we concocted a graphic novel that’s best described as a demented version of Three’s Company.  So, it’s kind of a wacky comedy about these eccentric artists living in a dilapidated apartment in Hollywood.  And we’re getting ready to publish the first volume of that and try to spin that off into an animated comedy series.  It’s very different in tone from Dig Two Graves but sometimes you gotta swing the opposite way and keep in interesting.       

 

Me: Give me some words of wisdom for any budding filmmakers who may be reading this.    

HA: If you want to be a filmmaker, it’s important to watch movies.  To watch a lot of great movies; old movies and really understand the potential of the medium.  I think, a lot of times with a first-time filmmaker, they can be a little bland in a cinematic sense.  Sort of shot after shot of talking heads.  They don’t utilize the full vocabulary of the medium.  When you’re ready to make a movie, my advice is, it’s such a laborious, time-consuming process that you really have to make something that you’re passionate about, not something that you think is going to sell or be popular cuz chances are it’s not going to necessarily make millions of dollars.  You’re going to be spending years of your life on this.  You gotta invest your time in something you really believe in.  And enjoy the process as much as the final product. 

 

Me: How do indie filmmakers get their films seen?

HA: We played the festival circuit and then the last year or two had just been trying to figure out the wild, wild west of independent film distribution.  We finally got that sorted out.  It’s now releasing in theatres and on VOD.  Its been a long journey.  We’re doing an iTunes exclusive for the first four weeks and then it’ll be available on all VOD platforms; Amazon, Playstation… all of them.  That’ll be April 21st.  All VOD platforms.  Just search Dig Two Graves right now on iTunes and it’ll pop up.

 

What are you waiting for?!  You heard the man.  Go check it out and watch this little gem.  If you’re a horror fan and like a good indie film, this is a strong story with great characters that is filmed beautifully be someone who appreciates a good movie and wanted to create something for his audience to remember.  Hunter Adams was a joy to talk to.  I believe he’s a director to watch out for and a name you’ll hear more of in the future.  Start now and don’t miss a thing he does.