6 Insane Upcoming Movies (That Aren't Getting Enough Hype)
In terms of blockbusters, 2016 has been a bog of farts ... the proverbial Swamp Thing being Ben-Hur, which led the summer stank parade with a whopping $120 million loss. But just because the mainstream dried up doesn't mean we're dying of thirst. Not with the rich reservoir of daffy and incredible films currently living on the fringe.
That's right, it's time for another deep dive into the world of insane and awesome cinema hiding right in front of our faces. Here are some upcoming films you absolutely need to see, but didn't realize it until now ...
Iggy Pop Plays An Eye-Stealing Monster In Dario Argento's The Sandman
The 1977 Italian giallo horror Suspiria is considered one of the best and bloodiest of its genre. Exactly 160 years before that, the E.T.A. Hoffman short The Sandman would go onto to inspire countless macabre stories, including the Neil Gaiman graphic novel series of the same name. Now, like precious chocolate and peanut butter, these two worlds are being deliciously mashed together in the form of director Dario Argento's upcoming adaptation -- all thanks to a successfully funded Indiegogo page and a certain street-walking cheetah ...
One whose original stage name may have been "Indiegogo."
Yes that's Iggy Pop. And yes, he will be playing the titular role of the Sandman ... a masked murderer who, according to the film's synopsis, uses a "lethally jagged melon spoon" to cut out the eyes of children. The story follows Nathan, a student who, years prior, killed the infamous Sandman to avenge his mother on Christmas Eve ... only to now witness his sinister return. Which I'm guessing looks like this:
"You have my mother's eyes" isn't supposed to be a creepy line ...
If The Sandman is a horror sundae swirling with amazing talent and story, then the Godfather of Punk is the shirtless cherry on top. Only I'm not finished yet, as this analogical dessert is getting slathered with a soundtrack by the band Goblin -- which you horror fans might know as the ones behind Suspiria's iconic music. So it's basically a horror classic in the making starring one of the most iconic punk singers alive, and it only has 5,000 Facebook likes. Meanwhile, the sequel to the Hasbro-produced Ouija movie has two million views on YouTube, you goddamn monsters.
And speaking of abominations ...
Monster Trucks: A Film About Monsters Who Are Also Trucks
Lord knows we've all watched a Fast & Furious film and thought to ourselves, "This would be way better if a subterranean cephalopod were driving the cars." Well, thanks to a collection of writers behind Kung Fu Panda, Monsters Vs. Aliens, The Invention Of Lying, Jurassic World, and Star Wars Fucking IX ... our demented prayers have been answered in the best possible way.
"If this bombs, splice in some nudity to repackage it for the Asian markets."
Starring Danny Glover, Rob Lowe, and Lucas Till, Monster Trucks is a refreshingly self-evident premise about a shark-faced monster who wiggles inside of a truck and befriends a young man.
Note to young men: Grinning strangers in trucks are usually not your friends.
Together, they go on a series of wacky and grotesque race adventures while attempting to release the motor ogre back to which it once came. Oh, and somewhere along the way, they manage to find even more of these truck-dwelling spaghetti demons.
Layout Note: Is the pink one supposed to be censored? It feels weird that it's not censored ...
It's Free Willy meets Hot Wheels Attack Pack, with a splash of profound, visceral horror. And while none of this is particularly special if you were watching a Syfy original movie, it turns out that Paramount Pictures has somehow spent a mind-fucking $125 million on this exuberant debacle -- a move they are clearly trying to bury by quietly opening the film in January after pushing back the release four different times. That means the film is either a smoldering pile of horse debris or so overwhelmingly world-changing that the studio has hidden it like the Ark of the Covenant. Either way, we should support it -- if only to encourage more big-budget blockbusters crafting original premises out of mescaline nightmares and cocaine doodles. After all, it's this exact kind of terrorhouse delirium that made every classic children's film from the 80s.
The Director Of OldBoy Is Making A Lesbian Revenge Drama
The South Korean film Oldboy is one of the most beautiful and sinister practical jokes ever played on an audience eager to watch a mindless revenge thriller. It was the cinematic equivalent of eating a delicious pie secretly plated on a photo of the chef teabagging your mother ... but like, in a good way. And while Hollywood geared up to make an unsavable remake, director Chan-wook Park kept on making insane films like I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK and Thirst. And now he's back with The Handmaiden, which is about a 1930s fetish house of backstabbing and mystery.
Also, there's puppet-fucking.
Fetish house of front-stabbing too, apparently.
In fairness, there are a number of things she might be doing to that marionette -- but judging by the film's synopsis, it's fair to say that we're witnessing some kind of amazing deviance. Told in three parts via three different perspectives, the unraveling story follows a conman seeking to marrying a rich man's niece in order to steal his family fortune -- only to be double-crossed by his accomplice, a young woman posing as the niece's maid. This triangle involves a series of elaborate sex scenes featuring everything from knives to tentacle porn to dentistry to a goddamn fetish dungeon of preserved genitalia.
This is all I'm allowed to show you.
If you've seen the beautifully shot depravity and emotional gut-stabbing that was Oldboy, you know damn well that this is the film Fifty Shades wishes it was as it cries itself to sleep at night.
An Animated Recreation Of The 1966 Sniper Shooting Called Tower
On the morning of August 1st, 1966, a 25-year-old ex-marine wrote an oddly lucid note requesting that his life insurance policy be donated to a mental health foundation and his body autopsied for abnormalities. He then left his home, purchased several firearms, and climbed the University of Texas clock tower, from where he proceeded to shoot 49 people (killing 14) over the course of 90 minutes ... that is, until two officers and one civilian went McClane on his ass. Police would later find his wife and mother dead in their beds, his written motivation being to spare them from the public humiliation of his horrible actions.
This random and tragic event was both dramatized and spoofed for years and years afterward. Now, thanks to a documentary called Tower, it appears we're getting our first truly thorough play-by-play of what happened ... all bizarrely animated like a Wikipedia illustration.
Nothing better represents the ugliness of humanity quite like cel shading.
Rotoscoped over real actors, the film recreates each sickening gunshot as described by the real-life people who witnessed the terror. The result looks more like an ultra-stylized action film than a documentary -- save for the real-life footage peppered throughout.
The soundtrack is by A-ha.
Frankly, it seems safer witnessed through the lens of a cartoon, as these very real events will no doubt haunt the viewer like a cursed painting. Having won several awards at those fancy festivals with the leaves n' shit, the movie is currently screening in select theaters around the country. Be sure to bring the kids!
Voyage Of Time: An IMAX Documentary About EVERYTHING
Director Terrence Malick is an acquired taste. Back in 2011, his experimental feature Tree Of Life was so disjointed in narrative that when a theater in France accidentally played the reels out of order, no one in the audience noticed. But that's how T-Mack likes to jam -- dreamily picturesque, and with more celebrity beachgoing than TMZ's front page.
Although TMZ Sean Penn usually features more punching.
Also, sometimes he has dinosaurs in his films, because why the fuck not? Extra points for exploring eons of existence and the very nature of mankind. And this is why it only makes sense that his first-ever documentary is a 40-minute IMAX exploration of the entire universe as narrated by Brad Pitt.
Because 40 minutes is really all you need to cover EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT.
Everyone clean your bongs for Voyage Of Time -- a film shot over the course of four goddamn decades and spanning the entire globe in order to visually recreate cosmic and microscopic events that mankind is unable to witness firsthand. Think of it like Fantasia meets a PBS special -- all made under the watchful eyes of scientists from MIT, UC Berkeley, Cambridge, and Caltech.
But it's not just the content that's a scientific marvel. The film's visual effects were achieved through a combination of CGI, models, real locations, and chemical reactions filmed at varying camera speeds.
You've never realized watching paint dry could be so mind-blowing.
Because it's not enough making an epic documentary about the wonder of cosmos; you also have to shoot it in the most God-punchingly tedious way imaginable.
Duncan Jones Is Making A Blade Runner-Esque Spiritual Sequel To Moon
As the son of David Bowie and director of Warcraft, it's safe to say that Duncan Jones had an intense year. Despite being 10 years too late, the video game adaptation managed to do better than any film of its kind overseas, guaranteeing a sequel despite lukewarm American reception.
And you know what? That's great. Because along with seeming like a genuinely cool guy, Jones was also the director of Moon -- an amazing sci-fi film featuring Sam Rockwell and a robot Kevin Spacey. And while going from indie to blockbuster holds the heavy risk of spoiling a director, it appears that Duncan has shaken off that curse with his next awesome picture.
You're looking at a production drawing from Mute, a 12-years-in-the-making comedy sci-fi noir starring Alexander Skarsgard as a silent bartender searching for a missing woman in futuristic Berlin, only to cross paths with a seedy surgeon played by Paul Rudd. That's literally all we know about this film beyond the director describing it as "Paul Schrader's Hardcore meets Robert Altman's MASH" and "the Casablanca of the future," as well as having similarities to Blade Runner and being a "spiritual" sequel to Moon. But thanks to the film also being adapted into a comic, we do have this cyberpunk bovine material to go by:
No matter how weird the future is, there will be milk.
Yeah, that appears to be some kind of farm skyscraper overlooking a dystopic neon city of flying cars and congested crowds. Fucked if I know what any of that means, but after Moon, I'll follow the White Duke's starbaby marquees anywhere.
Do you know of an upcoming-but-unknown film that'll make audiences shit britches? Tell Dave on Twitter.
Also check out 6 Crazy New Movies That Slipped Under Audiences' Radars and 5 Weird New Movies That Deserve Way More Hype.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 7 Deleted Scenes That Were Necessary To The Plot, and other videos you won't see on the site!
Follow us on Facebook, and we'll follow you everywhere.
