Sing Me a Song of Steve Harrington

I was just reminded that Stranger Things returns tonight at 8pm, with its fifth and final season -- well part of it anyway. The first four episodes tonight. Then there's three more on Christmas, and then comes the finale on New Years Eve. They're swallowing up our holidays! And I am cool with that -- I don't know about y'all but I consider myself a fan of the show, and I wish them the best at landing this immense beast of their creation. It truly does feel like the end of an era. Anyway I realized a fine way to mark this occasion would be to go dig up all of the pictures of Joe Keery on his recent musical tour that I've had gathering dust in the "Joe Keery" folder on my computer -- we certainly shouldn't allow them to go to waste. There are a few other photos mixed in, from magazines etc, but s'all Joe in his glory! Hit the jump for 30+ snaps our favorite furry boy out of Hawkins, Indiana...

Good Morning, Monsters

I'd almost posted these behind-the-scenes photos of Frankenstein star Jacob Elordi with his stunt double (I think his name is Daniel Cudmore) a couple of weeks back, but it didn't feel right to splay the look of the monster all over the place so early -- I don't think the movie had even hit Netlfix when I first saw these. But now it has and I think it'll probably be a popular post-turkey watch this holiday so here, enjoy these too. They're a full meal all on their own! But speaking of the forthcoming holiday feast -- today's our last day on site til Monday, which I assume you'd assumed but one shouldn't make too many asses out of you and me so I figured I'd put it into words to make it crystal. Don't worry -- just slide yourself between these two slices of hearty white bread and make of yourself a sandwich til I'm back. You'll be fine.

The Grand Hot Witch

I don't know why I keep watching Wednesday, I think it mostly sucks save some fun casting -- I do like Jenna Ortega but it's Gwendoline Christie, Heather Matarazzo, and that little weirdo Evie Templeton who keep me coming back. That said this last run of mediocre episodes had me thinking I might be giving up that ghost altogether... but Tim Burton's gone and dragged me back in! My beloved Eva Green has been cast as Morticia's sister Aunt Ophelia, a character who has been teased several times -- I cannot, will not, ever say no to Eva. She elevates everything she touches and working with Burton again will surely bring out her delicious witchy ways once more. Aww now I wanna go watch Penny Dreadful again. Hey remember when Josh Hartnett went gay all of a sudden? Good times, good times...

Pics of the Day

The first photos of Aaron Taylor-Johnson on the set of Robert Eggers' now-filming horror film Werewulf (via) are the literal platonic ideal of what we would hope the first photos of Aaron Taylor-Johnson on the set of Robert Eggers' now-filming horror film Werewulf would be -- Aaron Taylor-Johnson half-naked, howling ferally and covered in blood! Huzzah -- we won, kids! It's giving me The Northman meets Nosferatu -- big shock, that combo. Anyway see my previous post on the film, which is already set to open on Christmas 2026, right here. And hit the jump for the rest of the pics...

Josh Ruben Gone Wild

Horror writer-director-actor-hunk Josh Ruben has announced his next movie after last year's Heart Eyes was a Valentine's hit and it sounds like a good 'un -- he's turning Matt and Harrison Query's 2024 novel Wilderness Reform into a movie! It sounds very Nightmare on Elm Street III but set at Crystal Lake -- it's about a troubled teenager who's sent to an isolated camp with a bunch of other misfits looking to get reformed, only to find the camp counselor's cheeriness turned up to a terrifying degree. So you could also say it's the Wednesday parts of Addams Family Values turned into a horror movie. Anyway I've dug all of Ruben's movies to date -- which also includes Scare Me and Werewolves Within -- so I'm already down for whatever he's looking to serve, but the added bonus of an overly cheerful camp setting really hits home for this "went to Church Camp four years straight" human being right here. Anybody read the book? And ohh what the heck since we're here and Heart Eyes came up here's a photo that its star Mason Gooding posted on Instagram earlier: 

To Know Her is to Keeper

Well I managed to make it to the day I see Osgood Perkins' latest horror movie Keeper without knowing a single thing about it -- well okay that's not entirely true since I know Oz directed it and I know it stars Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland and I think I saw that it's Folk Horror. But even though I posted the trailer in August I still haven't watched it and I've avoided any other information about the film. And yes I brandish this ignorance as a badge of pride! As one should in America 2025. Ignorance and the right to be proud of it is our greatest export! Seriously though keeping one's self unspoiled in this day and age takes mucho bobbing and mucho-er weaving, and with an hour to go until the curtain drops I think I can say I made it! Huzzah! I will just refrain from reading this post's comments until later. Can't catch me! In summation goodbye for the night and hello Rossif Sutherland's glorious beard...

Good Morning, Monsters

Hello and happy Monday -- your wayward host has indeed returned and he's brought with him several gifs of a butt-naked Oscar Isaac in Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein to smooth the process along -- and while we're at it, what is it with Guillermo and hot dudes barely visible junk floating in bathtubs anyway? It's a very specific thing to have pop up in two (live-action) movies in a row, right? (I added the "live-action" because as far as I recall I don't remember Gepetto getting his gray balls out to take a soak in Pinocchio but it's possible I blocked that out.)

Anyway Frankenstein dropped on Netflix over the weekend so I assume most of you have now seen it if you weren't near one of the theaters where it was shwoing, so please -- offer me your opinions! I liked not loved it -- Jacob Elordi is terrific, it looks great, it sounds great, but there was just something missing... some spark of life, if you'll allow me that indulgence. Maybe if Mia Goth had gotten more to do I'd have been bigger on it? Anyway it's not every movie where Oscar Isaacs gets his pubes out (more like "every other" at this point, blessed man) so hit the jump for the steamy collection of gifs I assembled...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sinners (2025)

Remmick: Long ago... the men who stole my father's land forced these words upon us. I hated those men, but the words still bring me comfort. Those men lied to themselves and lied to us. They told stories of a God above and a Devil below. And lies of a dominion of man over beast and Earth. We are earth and beast, and god. We are woman and man. We are connected, you and I - to everything. You will taste the sweet pain of death. We will make beautiful music together.

I'm seeing this movie on IMAX again tonight!

So it's on my mind. Anybody rewatched it lately?

The Scream King Cometh

After years upon years of bouncing about in horror flicks, from the ace Strange Darling recently all the way back to that time Faux Freddy Krueger menaced him in a red speedo in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, actor Kyle Gallner has gone and written one of his own! It's called Man Vs. and it's a Gold Rush era survival thriller about a miner who gets betrayed and left to die in the Rockies during winter and must, you know, survive. Hence the term "survival thriller." One of the Radio Silence guys (Justin Martinez to be specific) is set to direct the movie -- and Kyle will of course star. As he well should! We love a period horror film, we love movies about grizzly bears hunting people, we love Kyle Gallner -- all we need to know now is when we can buy our ticket. Okay also will there be any skinny-dipping in mountain streams -- if you haven't written that scene yet Kyle I recommend you scribble one down quick. Something like, "And then he goes skinny-dipping in a mountain stream." See? Easy. Can I have a co-wirter credit?

Kyle Gallner’s eyes totally follow you in this photo pic.twitter.com/nSlO0BAuOR

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 20, 2024

Garrett Wareing Three Times

Three outtakes from The Long Walk actor and fave new fur twink Garrett Wareing's previously posted photoshoot for Numero Netherlands have been unloaded upon our faces today (via). I don't think I mentioned on here that I finally caught The Long Walk when it hit streaming after missing it in theaters (although I did share a few words on Letterboxd) and... I did not like it. It didn't work for me at all. Although I will say this for it -- this was my first time seeing Garrett here act and I actually thought he was good in it. I'd been assuming he was just a pretty boy hot piece but he held his own. So he's a pretty boy hot piece who can also act! Will wonders never et cetera. Hit the jump for the other two photos... 

Happy Halloween!

May all your dreams come true.

 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Bad Taste (1987)

Frank: Just remember, we're only authorized 

to use violence when protecting the planet.

Barry: And the moon.

Frank: Yeah, and the moon.

A very happy 64th birthday to Peter Jackson today -- coincidentally I just saw Bad Taste for the very first time two nights ago. And it is, true to its title, in very bad taste. Fun though, if seriously rough around the edges. Not sure why I hadn't seen this one before -- I've seen Dead Alive approximately five thousand times at this point. Anyway supposedly Jackson has been off re-working his early films for 4K re-release for the past few years (if you've been wondering wtf he's been up to yeah, join the club) but the clock is ticking, Petey! And as desperate as we all are to see the exploding felt pustules of the Feebles in high-res I think what we really need is a proper copy of Heavenly Creatures at this point. Here's to hoping that 2026 is the year this finally happens.

The Monster Demanded a Mate!

I've talked about the poster artist Akiko Stehrenberger here on the site several times as she's one of my favorites, and today the fine folks at Coda dropped her latest, a spin on The Bride of Frankenstein, and per usual I love it. She always comes up with such succinct and surprising images for her designs. (Who could forget those flames for Portrait of a Lady on Fire?) Anyway tomorrow's Halloween and our "Ways Not To Die" post previous to this one aside we haven't been dropping nearly enough horror-related stuff on the site this month dammit! I've been trying to get myself into the mood but it hasn't quite been landing. So y'all tell me what your plans are for the greatest holiday in the comments please! I wanna hear if you're dressing up, what movies you're watching -- all of it! I need mood inspiration. So rattle your bones at me, I beg of you!

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

It's always a shame when David Corenswet has to go but we do sure like watching him walk away. Hit the jump for the rest...

Scares Ahoy

Let's just go all in on the horror trailers today, shall we? I shared the trailer for Scream 7 earlier, which is a biggie obviously -- let's turn our eyes towards some lower budget but extra promising stuff now with Man Finds Tape. From first-time filmmakers Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman this has played several fests (somehow I missed it at Tribeca in the spring) and gotten good notices and now Magnet is dropping it in theaters and online on December 5th. This plot actually sounds similar to the plot for Shelby Oaks (which came out last week and which I reviewed right here) in that it's about YouTube paranormal investigators getting wrapped up in real-world horrors, mixing found-footage and not-found-footage. Basically it feels as if the world finally caught onto Lake Mungo (which I mentioned yesterday among my favorite films of 2008) and that movie's influence is spreading at loast, as well it oughta. Anyway unlike the trailer for Scream 7, which I admitted to watching, I have not watched this here trailer for Man Finds Tape -- this one I wanna go into cold. But you can watch it if you want because here it is!

Amd what the hell since we're here, why not -- I'll also share the trailer for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things  since it also dropped this morning -- I don't really talk about this show on here much but I'm a pretty big fan of it and I'm very excited for this stretch of mega-budget mega-length episodes that they're promising to close things out on. (The release date for the first four episodes is November 26th, then the next three on Christmas Day, and then the finale on New Years Eve.) Have they gotten too big for their 80s britches? I guess. we'll see. I mean literally they all have since they're all like 40 with smoker's voices now and still playing 12. Anyway all I ask is for one more shower scene with Joe Keery please. Give us a furry lil' treat before you go!

Hello, Sydney... Again? Again

The trailer and poster for Scream 7 -- I guess they're just calling it that? Okay -- dropped this morning and here I am, sharing it with you. Now normally I tell y'all I don't watch trailers and I especially don't watch horror movie trailers because they always give away too much. But I couldn't help myself today so I actually watched this trailer. I was too curious, given the mangled-up route this one took to making (what with half of the reboot actors peacing-out), along with those bizarre casting announcements -- Matthew Lillard??? I couldn't help myself. But this trailer is extremely straightforward -- Sidney Prescott and her daughter are hunted by a Ghostface, the end. I feel as if Kevin Williamson (who wrote AND directed this one) has to have more up his sleeve than this -- right? But I guess we'll have to wait until February to find out. Watch:

Scream 7 drops on February 27th.

(I'm going to form a prayer circle that they shock us all 

and Melissa Berrera & Jenna Ortega are the killers.)

(Or Parker Posey. Justice for Jennifer Jolie!)

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2008

Now that the festival rush of Fall 2025 is behind me I've been feeling the nagging sensation to check back into our long long too-long running series of "Siri Says" posts -- the last one I did was back in January! These posts have gotten increasingly sporadic as the remaining years have dwindled -- when I checked what's left this morning I saw there were only five years out of one hundred left for us to do. Do what, you ask since it's been so long since I've done one? Well the idea is that I had my phone choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then I picked my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Once we got down to the teens the process changed a little because it took too long for Siri to get to a number I hadn't already done, so I wrote the remaining years on slips of paper and picked one with my eyes shut. And that's how we ended up with the year 2008 today.

It's the last year of the Aughts we had left to do -- another decade crossed off! And this is another year when I was actively blogging here at MNPP so there's documentation of my thoughts on 2008's movies already -- click here to see what my favorite movies were at that moment. My list now, seventeen years later, has changed a little! Not entirely, but some. So let's get to it. I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2008

Synecdoche, New York

(dir. Charlie Kaufman)

-- released on October 24th 2008 --

Let the Right One In 

(dir. Tomas Alfredson)

-- released on December 12th 2008 --

In Bruges

(dir. Martin McDonagh) 

-- released on February 29th 2008 --

The Fall 

(dir. Tarsem Singh) 

-- released on May 30th 2008

Lake Mungo 

(dir. Joel Anderson) 

-- released on June 18th 2008 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: Wall*E (dir. Andrew Snanton), The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Wendy & Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Mister Lonely (dir. Harmony Korine), Funny Games U.S. (dir. Michael Haneke), The Chaser (dir. Na Hong-jin), Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalondo), Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh), [REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)...

...  Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein), Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog), The House Bunny (dir. Fred Wolf), The Ruins (dir. Carter Smith), Doomsday (dir. Neil Marshall), Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves), Hunger (dir. Steve McQueen), Reprise (dir. Joachim Trier)

What are your favorite movies of 2008?

Chug Billy Chug

We would be very happy boys if Billy Magnusson just started making lots of horror movies -- that cherubic face splattered with blood? Are you kidding me? I'll swoon. So we're greeting today's news with one helluva huzzah -- he's going to star in Buzzkill, the next horror movie from Suitable Flesh director Joe Lynch! (Suitable Flesh is so much fun y'all.) Billy boy will play a recovering alcoholic sheriff in a small Texas town who finds himself facing down an invisible monster that people can only see when they're trashed. It's also got a Jaws twist in that there's a big annual beer festival coming up in the town that's doomed to turn into a bloodbath if he can't stop it. So kind of John Carpenter's They Live meets MTV's Spring Break programming? I'm into it. Put Billy in a uniform and I'm into it. (But take Billy out of a uniform? Now we're really cooking.) In related news Billy's actually got a scary thriller type flick out on Halloween -- it's called Violent Ends and god he looks gorrrrgeous in the trailer, watch below:

Black Hole Bounces Back

There has been talk for years and years and years and years that my favorite artist Charles Burns' masterpiece Black Hole (which began an eight issue run in 1995 and was then collected into a graphic novel in 2005) would be turned into a movie or something -- David Fincher was trying to do it for ages. It's been a long while since I've seen any news on it so I'd presumed it was dead, which honestly I was fine with -- I don't know that Burns' work is especially translatable to moving pictures. But today there's new news -- specifically that I Saw the T.V. Glow filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun is going to turn it into a series for Netflix. Which makes a world of sense, even though it hadn't occured to me when ISTTVG came out -- in retrospect that movie is totally giving major Burns vibes!

If you don't recall Black Hole tells the story of a sexually transmitted disease making its way through a high school, hideously deforming people as it goes -- honestly I haven't read Black Hole in a decade myself so I should give it another read in the wake oif this news. I am a real Burns obsessive though -- I think I own more of his work than I do any other artist. So clearly I'll be following this news closely. Even if I don't think Black Hole needs to be made into anything other than what it is right now I can see the possibilities in Schoenbrun's hands. We'll see! Netflix has already greenlit the thing straight-to-series so it's really happening happening. Prepare your body holes!

What Happened To Riley Brennan

I haven't done a very good job celebrating Ye Spooky Season here at MNPP this month -- getting sick at the tail-end of NYFF knocked me on my ass and got me too far behind on other things which I'm still catching up on. Alas. But here's a word of advice -- there's a good horror movie out this weekend! It's called Shelby Oaks and I saw it a hundred million months ago (okay okay it was July of 2024 but you know -- time has ceased having meaning or whatever) but I gave it a good review at Mashable when I did, and said review has now made its way onto a new poster for the movie seen above. I'm the one saying "Unnerving As Hell" if you can't quite make out the tinier type. I posted the trailer for the film a couple of weeks ago, you can watch it right here. I look forward to watching it again since it's been so long, but there are a few scenes from this movie genuinely burned into my brain, in the scary way, all these many months later -- a very good sign it will hold up!