The arena was booming yesterday at the Anaheim Convention Center. From Gotham, to teasing us with Summer’s biggest movies, Wondercon’s attendees were having a great time. The day concluded with Blumhouse Productions. They provided the audience with an inside look at the micro-budget “found footage” thriller, The Gallows, the “set within social media” horror, Unfriended, and a prequel to the famous franchise, Insidious Chapter 3.
The panel started off with “The Gallows”. Written and directed by newcomers Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff, the film was made with a minuscule budget. Originally just a fake trailer on Youtube, it was picked up by Blumhouse Productions and New Line Cinema for distribution. The executive producer, Jason Blum said that “found footage” films are much harder to get right, but that this film felt so extremely authentic. A brief teaser was shown for the film, but it has not been made available online yet. It is set to be released in July.
Set 20 years after a horrific accident during a small town school play, students at the school resurrect the failed show in a misguided attempt to honor the anniversary of the tragedy – but soon discover that some things are better left alone.
Following The Gallows, was a look at Unfriended– a horror film taking place mainly on a computer desktop. Shelley Hennig, Moses Jacob Storm, Will Peltz, Renee Olstead, Jacob Wysocki and Courtney Halverson took the stage along with the screenwriter Nelson Greaves. The story of Unfriended is about a group of friends being stalked by a demonic figure over the internet seeking vengeance about a video leads to a vicious bully to commit suicide a year earlier. What was interesting about this film is how the actors got to be their own camera operators. “We were our own cinematographers,” said Olstead, ” We got to create our own chaos through our computers”. The actors barely even met each other in person. They skyped each other for 12 hours at a time rehearsing with each other.
Unfriended will be released on April 17th.
The final film to be presented was Insidious Chapter 3– the prequel for the famous franchise. The panel welcomed Director Leigh Whannell, Lin Shaye, Dermot Mulroney, Angus Sampson, Stefanie Scott, and Hayley Kiyoko.
The audience was introduced with two clips from the film: one featuring Shaye and Scott trying to contact her mother, and another with Scott being haunted by a scary looking demon wearing a respirator. Like the previous films, there is a central villain that must be fought; in this prequel it’s called “The Man Who Can’t Breathe”. “He will just scare the crap out of you,” Mulroney tells the audience. Well if “The Man Who Can’t Breathe” looks anything like what was presented in the clips, then there might be truth in his words.
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Insidious Chapter 3 will be released on June 5th.
However, that wasn’t all what Blum had to show us. He gave us a surprise 10 second teaser of Sinister 2, which is to be released in August 2015. The chilling clip made the crowd extra ecstatic. Unfortunately, nothing more was said about the anticipated sequel.
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