The Halloween Horror Film Update!

Good news! After being released in America last week, Saw VI has become the worst performing Saw film ever! Bringing in just $14 million over its first weekend it's worse than the original Saw's $18m and a much lower return than the $30m upwards that Saw's II to V's opening weekends...erm...saw. Now, Saw VII has already been confirmed so don't go getting your hopes up too much but at least this makes Saw VIII seem a bit more unlikely. God knows there's been far too much torture pornfest films in the last 3 or 4 years. Hostel, Hostel II, The Hills Have Eyes, The Hills Have Eyes 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (sensing a pattern here?), The Hitcher, Captivity. Enough! There's only so many different ways to gruesomely kill someone and you found them all! Well done. Now fuck off will you?

You might want to prepare yourselves for me turning into a dirty big hypocrite at this point. Ready? Good. Wes Craven may be directing Scream 4!!! (See what I mean?) Scream 4 is basically going ahead whatever happens but the big question is whether Wes will be there to give the franchise the best chance of having as decent a return as it could possibly get. He recently stated on Twitter, "In response to the rumors about me directing SCREAM 4, a deal has not yet been set, so stay tuned for accurate information." Yes, I know, that's technically a denial not confirmation. But he says a deal has "not yet been set." In other words there are talks in place and there is a possibility of it happening. And I really hope it does.

The Scream franchise was actually, y'know, good, as opposed to most horror films out there. The first two films are absolute genius, parodying the hell out of themselves and other horror films in hilarious fashion whilst also managing to be somewhat scary and shocking. The third one was weaker and probably stretched things a bit too far, but it was still fun and worth seeing if only for Randy's cameo appearance in which he gives his awesome horror trilogy rules (Number one: You've got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman in this film. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third film you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up!).

However, I suppose me saying Scream 3 ran out of steam isn't very promising for a fourth film is it? Well, it's been 9 years since Scream 3 so at least the franchise has had a bit of a rest and some new ideas may have spawned in that time. And the original writer is returning which is promising. There are also rumours that this will be the first in a new trilogy. That may be a bit much to be honest but we'll see. The last bit of good news is that a lot of the original cast are also returning. Neve Campbell (Sidney), Courtney Cox and David Arquette (Gale Weathers and Dewey Riley) and Jamie Kennedy (Randy) are apparantly all signed up. If Wes Craven gets back on board too, Scream 4 will surely be at least as good as Scream 3. And compared to most other horror films, that's the equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back or Pulp Fiction. Hooray!

Lastly, I may post a review of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in the next couple of days. Depends if I have anything else that needs doing. Keep an eye out!